SC Primary: Fight For The Coast [VIDEO]

Call it the fight for the coast.

Mitt Romney’s presidential challengers were to campaign up and down the South Carolina shoreline on Sunday as they worked to stymie the GOP front-runner one week before this state’s pivotal GOP primary. The former Massachusetts governor was taking a rare day off the campaign trail ahead of a jam-packed week that includes a pair of debates — one in Myrtle Beach on Monday and another in Charleston on Thursday.

NJ Decides: Presidential Election 2012
SC Primary

The South Carolina coast is a heavily populated area that’s home to many veterans, active military personnel, moderates and fiscal conservatives whose support Romney and his rivals are counting on as they work to cobble together the diverse voting coalition needed to win the state on Jan. 21.

Florida votes just 10 days later, putting pressure on Romney’s opponents to dramatically shift the trajectory of the race over the next week.

Perry: Marines in video are `kids,’ not criminals

GOP presidential hopeful Rick Perry is accusing the Obama administration of “over-the-top rhetoric” and “disdain for the military” in its condemnation of a video that purportedly shows Marines urinating on dead bodies in Afghanistan.

No one has been charged in the case, but officials in the U.S. and abroad have called for swift punishment of the four Marines. A military criminal investigation and an internal Marine Corps review are under way. The Geneva Conventions forbid the desecration of the dead.

Perry tells CNN’s “State of the Union” that he thinks the Marines involved should be reprimanded, but not pursued with criminal charges.

Perry said “18, 19-year-old kids make stupid mistakes all too often and that’s what’s occurred here.”

Gingrich: nominee must withstand `Obama onslaught’

Newt Gingrich is defending his aggressive attacks on GOP front-runner Mitt Romney, saying the tough questions about his record need to be raised during the Republican primaries.

Speaking Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” Gingrich said Republicans must make sure they don’t nominate a candidate who collapses in September “under the weight of Barack Obama.”

He says the president is expected to spend a billion dollars on his re-election campaign and the GOP has to be able to withstand what he calls the “Obama onslaught.”

Gingrich says Romney’s record as a former governor of Massachusetts is more moderate than Romney advertises and he needs to “get straight” with voters.

Gingrich says Republicans in South Carolina, which holds its presidential primary next Saturday, would be uncomfortable with Romney as the nominee.

Where’s Newt? SC campaign stumbles plague Gingrich

Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich was greeted with a standing ovation when he was announced

at the South Carolina barbecue. Too bad the former House speaker wasn’t around to see it.

He was inexplicably missing from Friday’s event. His absence forced the event’s moderator to ask awkwardly, “Can we check and see where the speaker is?”

It was just one in a string of clumsy, head-scratching events staged by the Gingrich campaign since the Republican primary moved to South Carolina. It’s a state that the candidate says he must win if he wants a shot at the nomination.

The chain of slip-ups raises questions about the campaign’s staffing and organizational skills, issues that have haunted Gingrich during the 2012 race.

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