Romney braces for rivals challenge

Front-runner Mitt Romney and his Republican presidential pursuers enter the final full day of campaigning today in a South Carolina primary contest significantly changed from just 24 hours earlier.

The former Massachusetts governor is looking to fend off challenges to his fragile lead from more conservative rivals Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum.

The entire field, including fourth and final candidate Ron Paul, scrambled for the shreds of support left by Texas Governor Rick Perry who quit the race on Thursday and endorsed Gingrich.

Perry’s departure, a raucous Thursday night debate and fresh reminders of Gingrich’s tumultuous personal life promised to make the dash to Saturday’s voting frenetic and the attacks increasingly sharp as they fight for the chance to face President Barack Obama in November.

The economy is the top issue, and Obama oversees a frustrated country still trying to recover from the Great Recession.

“I’ve been fighting for health reform, private sector, bottom-up ... for 20 years, while these two guys were playing footsies with the left,” Santorum, a former Pennsylvania senator, said of Romney and Gingrich, a former House of Representatives speaker, during one debate exchange.

Romney clings to a narrow lead in South Carolina polls, with Gingrich closing in.

Romney, whose lead has shrunk in the race’s closing days, remains the lukewarm leading candidate whose past stances on abortion and other social issues have failed to win the passion of the party’s more conservative members.

Gingrich is fighting Santorum for that support, despite stunning new allegations from an ex-wife that he had sought an open marriage before their divorce. That reminder of his multiple marriages and affairs could hurt him, especially in evangelical South Carolina.

Santorum continues to portray himself as the party’s true conservative and is trying to ride on the momentum of Thursday’s surprise news that he led Romney by 34 votes in the final count of the lead-off Iowa caucuses. Romney initially had been declared the winner.

The race spun even more wildly on Thursday when Perry quit. He never really caught on in the polls after a series of mistakes in debates that left voters wondering whether he could articulate his own policies.

“Newt’s not perfect, but who among us is,” Perry said in backing Gingrich, as news of the allegations of Gingrich’s ex-wife emerged. “The fact is, there is forgiveness for those who seek God and I believe in the power of redemption, for it is a central tenet of my own Christian faith.”

Marianne Gingrich told ABC’s Nightline that her ex-husband had wanted an “open marriage” so he could have both a wife and a mistress. She said Gingrich conducted an affair with Callista Bistek, now his wife, “in my bedroom in our apartment in Washington” while she was elsewhere.

“He was asking to have an open marriage and I refused. That is not a marriage,” she said in excerpts released by the network well ahead of the debate.

Gingrich angrily denounced the news media for putting his ex-wife front and centre in the final days of the race. “Let me be clear, the story is false,” he said when asked at the opening of the debate about her interview.

Santorum, Romney and Paul steered clear of the controversy.

“Let’s get onto the real issues, that’s all I’ve got to say,” said Romney, although he pointed out that he and his wife, Ann, have been married for 42 years.

Gingrich and Santorum challenged Romney over his opposition to abortion, a well-documented shift but a potent one in evangelical-heavy South Carolina.

Gingrich also released his income tax records during the debate, paving the way to discussing Romney’s.

The wealthy former venture capitalist has said he will release them in April, prompting Gingrich to suggest that would be too late. Romney could have the nomination locked up by then.

“If there’s anything that’s in there that’s going to help us lose the election, we should know before the election. If there’s not, why not release it?” Gingrich said. His effective tax rate, roughly 31.6% of his adjusted income, was about double what Romney told reporters earlier this week he had paid.