Jew World Order

It’s true to say that the current number – a staggering 42.2 million
people as of October, almost one in seven Americans – is the highest it’s
ever been. But the president who added the most to that number was George W
Bush, under whom the number of recipients rose by 14.7 million, compared to
Obama’s 14.2 million.

In fairness to Gingrich, the rate has shot up dramatically under Obama.
But current trends show that the number of people on food stamps is actually
falling – meaning that Gingrich’s inaccurate statement is likely become even
more inaccurate over time.

And lest there be accusations of bias, FactCheck also laid
into Obama’s first ad of the election season.

18.47 (13.47) There are quite dramatic thunderstorms in the
still-fairly-balmy Palmetto State.

18.37 (13.37) Ouch. In a press release headlined Happy 15th
Anniversary, Mr Speaker, the Romney camp reminds journalists that
we’re 15 years to the day that Gingrich was reprimanded for “ethical
wrongdoing” by the House of Representatives. They’ve even dusted off
the Washington
Post’s frontpage story from the following day:

The House voted overwhelmingly yesterday to reprimand House Speaker Newt
Gingrich (R-Ga.) and order him to pay an unprecedented $300,000 penalty, the
first time in the House’s 208-year history it has disciplined a speaker for
ethical wrongdoing…

Exactly one month before yesterday’s vote, Gingrich admitted that he
brought discredit to the House and broke its rules by failing to ensure that
financing for two projects would not violate federal tax law and by giving
the House ethics committee false information

18.25 (13.25) South Carolina was a killing field for Romney in
2008. He came fourth and dropped out of the race two weeks later. Here’s how
the state voted divided between McCain and Huckabee in that race, courtest
of Electoral
Geography.

As you can see the more Evangelical west of the state went for Huckabee while
McCain cleaned up in the more moderate, and more military, coastal counties.

The spread is likely to be more even tonight. Gingrich is the more
conservative candidate but he has moral issues that may cause problems with
the Evangelicals so don’t assume he’ll win those Huckabee counties by big
margins. If Romney is to have any hope he needs a big turnout on the coast,
especially Charleston, Horry and Beaufort.

18.10 (13.10) From the campaign trail, Alex Spillius asks what a Newt
victory would mean for the race:

The primary roadshow will on Monday move to Florida, a much bigger state than
Iowa (where Gingrich also came fourth), New Hampshire or South Carolina.
Millions more dollars will be needed for television advertising before
voting on Jan 31. After that come another eight contests in February and
then ten states at once on Super Tuesday, March 6.

Gingrich has the bare bones of a campaign in place in the Sunshine State,
but will once again be living largely on his wits and his acerbic turn of
phrase.

With debates, pre-recorded phone calls and the Internet, candidates are
able to reach voters more directly and cheaply these days, allowing the
likes of Gingrich or Ron Paul, the maverick libertarian congressman, to stay
in the race for longer than they would have in the past.

One viral moment on the web can compensate in part for a lack of
traditional boots on the ground and phone-bashing volunteers.

“Organisation is less important, that’s true, until you actually have
to do the job in the White House,” said Alex Castellanos. “If Newt
becomes president it would be like his campaign. It would make chaos look
organized. That’s who he is.”

17.52 (12.52) Piers Morgan did quite a substantial interview with Rick
Santorum, where he asks about the candidate’s extreme position on
abortion. The answer is thoughtful and interesting.

Completely unrelated: Santorum looks exhausted in the clip. Does he
have the energy to make a doomed march into Florida?

17.40 (12.40) Interesting post from the team at Google
Politics, showing what search terms people in South Carolina are
associating with the words ‘Romney’ and ‘Gingrich’.

Gingrich’s are all related to the ex-wife scandal and his personal
life:

While Romney’s are little more earnest – the kind of searches you would
associate with people trying to figure out what kind of a candidate he is.

–

17.32 (12.32) Wow. A new poll by the American Research Group
puts the numbers in South Carolina like this:

Gingrich: 40

Romney: 26

Paul: 18

Santorum: 13

If it comes true this would be great news for Gingrich for two reasons.
One: it’s a stonking 14-point victory. Obviously. But two: it would put a
lot of pressure on Santorum to drop out and get behind Newt. He may
be a dwindling candidate but Santourm’s supporters could prove the missing
link in Gingrich’s national coalition.

17.25 (12.25) Has there ever been a reversal like it? Romney
started the week as the all but inevitable nominee, having accomplished a
historic first as the winner of both Iowa
and New Hampshire, to say nothing of being a northern moderate who
looked like he would prevail in conservative South Carolina.

It looks like now like he’s going to end it having having won only one out of
three early contests, and will cede South Carolina to a chaotic candidate
who has twice been declared dead in the water.

Unexcitable establishment types will tell you it doesn’t matter: Romney is
going to be the nominee soone or later, one way or another. And they’re
probably right. But if he loses today it will cheer the Right into digging
in against him, ramping up their attacks and will reinforce the narrative
that he is a nominee the party accepted only after trying every single other
available option.

17.11 (12.11) I mentioned earlier that South Carolina is home to the
ugliest primary politics in the United States. This bizarre sign is being
stuck up around the place. No prizes for guessing who it’s aimed at.

Picture by the Atlantic’s Molly
Ball

16.55 (11.55) There was quite an amusing imbroglio at the Ham House
this morning where both Newt and Romney were expected to arrive at the same
time, in a show of pork-based bravado. Instead, Romney blinked and
arrived early. This was the unfortunate start to what looks like an
unfortunate day for the national frontrunner, per Politico’s
Ginger Gibson:

Romney arrived early, essentially blinking in the scheduling face off. He
climbed on top of a table to talk to the packed room.

People shouted “mic” because he couldn’t be heard. The problem?
The audio equipment set up for the event is Newt’s.

As Romney was trying to shake hands a woman spilled a glass of water,
causing a big ruckus.

At one point Romney climb over a table to move around the room. A woman
sitting where he was climbing passed out and had to be rushed out of the
crowded restaurant.

15.48 (10.48 EST) Hot off the presses. The latest
poll projections from FiveThirtyEight has Gingrich at 37.8% with a
82% chance of winning, while Romney trails at 30.2% with just an outside
chance of winning at 18%.

15.40 (10.40 EST) Today could be the last chance for Gingrich,
Santorum and Paul to mount a serious challenge to front runner Romney. The
Washington Post crunches exit poll data to show what the five key
factors will be on the day:

1.Battle of the sexes

2. Religious divide

3. South Carolina’s tea party like Iowa’s or N.H.?

4. Older voters

5. Romney’s Bain

14.55 (09.55 EST) Romney is a hit with the ladies in South
Carolina, according to the latest polls. Even before his ex-wife began
giving interviews about the breakdown of their marriage – Gingrich polled 12
percentage points better with men than women, while Romney did two points
better with women than men.

“If we pull it out, that’s what will be the difference,” one
Romney adviser tells Politico.

Romney makes his case to women not by talking about women’s issues, but by
talking about one woman in particular — his wife of 42 years, Ann. While
Romney spends the bulk of his stump speech attacking President Barack Obama,
he also makes sure to weave in mentions of how his wife was the one who
convinced him to run.

^{Romney and his favourate lady, his wife Ann}

14.35 (09.35 EST) How will the US Republican candidates fare tonight
and what are the implications of this vote? The
Guardian reports:

Newt Gingrich:

A win for Gingrich in South Carolina would mean that instead of the Republican
nominating process being over at the end of January, as Romney had hoped,
the candidates would settle into a long drawn out contest, fought state by
state, month by month through to the spring.

Mitt Romney:

a win in South Carolina would put him back on track and make him favourite to
take Florida. He has a big staff operation in Florida that has been
organising in the state since last summer, and he and his backers have
already spent $6m in advertising there. If he wins South Carolina the
nomination is effectively his, even though Gingrich might drag out the
campaign a bit longer.

Rick Santorum:

Of the four remaining candidates, he is the likeliest to be heading for the
exit. If he does lose in South Carolina, a lot of right-wingers would like
to see him pull out to allow conservatives to rally behind Gingrich.

Ron Paul:

No chance of winning South Carolina or the nomination. His strategy is simply
to keep accumulating delegates to take to party conference in August.

He has opted against competing in Florida because, unlike other states, it is
winner takes all and there would be no share of the delegates for him. So
Paul is going to concentrate his campaigning elsewhere, in the next states
up after Florida, such as Nevada and Maine.

14.15 (09.15 EST) California-based GOP strategist Rob Stutzman says
Romney’s remaining opponents sound more determined than ever to make him
wage a long and potentially costly battle for the Republican presidential
nomination, but the end result is inevitable:

If Mitt wins South Carolina, then anyone that continues on is walking dead. It
was quite legitimate for all of them to go to South Carolina and see if they
could break out. Because if one of them could win South Carolina, it would
probably winnow the rest of the field out and leave more of a singular
conservative for voters to coalesce behind.

14.03 (09.03 EST) US meteorologist Jim
Cantore tweets that voters in South Carolina will face “multiple
lines of showers and thunderstorms today”. Check
it out ther weather here.

13.45 (08.45 EST) In just a few hours, Gingrich and Romney will have
their last showdown in the final leg of campaigning South Carolina… in a
ham house.

Both candidates, much to their dismay, are scheduled to be at Tommy’s Country
Ham House in Greenville, South Carolina at 10:45 am. The conflict was
discovered last night when both campaigns sent out their schedules for the
final hours of campaigning. Neither side wanted to back down and say they
weren’t going to show, and now a media circus is forming at the beloved
breakfast spot.

^{Showdown in ham house}

13.25 (08.25 EST) The
Ticket has a humorous piece on the evangelical dilemma in South
Carolina: to vote for the adulterer or the Mormon?

For South Carolina conservatives, especially evangelical Christians, the
2012 campaign season is the year of magical rethinking. Look at the
frontrunners:

If you want a president with a legacy of marital fidelity, you’re going to
have to work around Newt Gingrich’s adultery.

If you believe that Mormons don’t really qualify as Christian, you may find
yourself struggling with Mitt Romney. This is about as close to compromise
as you can get in a family with deep roots in old-time religion and limited
government, and which holds a general all-round disdain for Democrats in
high office.

13:13 (08.14 EST) On Twitter, excited voters begin to wake:

@FlyntLMBT Its a rainy Saturday in
South Carolina, breakfast then going to vote #scprimary
@beckcl78
I hope everyone I know in South Carolina is voting for Herman Cain
today. I’m pretty sure that’s just @mimiclemson.

12.20 (07.20 EST) Polls have now opened across South Carolina and early
voters have begun casting their ballots. Many said yesterday they were yet
to make their mind up over the two frontrunners Gingrich and Romney, with
some waiting until the final hours to make their decision.

^{Head to head: Gingrich vs Romney}

12.00 (07.00 EST) In case you missed it, Stephen Colbert, the satirical
Comedy Central host who had himself shown interest in making a bid for the
White House, appeared in Charleston yesterday to urge Republicans to vote
for Herman Cain – the only man in town who didn’t get the joke.

Cain, who is still on the ballot paper in SC, didn’t mind being the butt of
the jokes, he said, if only Americans could learn how to take one. His
message? “As I said in one of the debates, America needs to lighten up.”

To lead by example, Cain then proceeded to warble his way through Believe In
Yourself, from The Wiz, which we can all agree is worth posting. Hat-tip
Washington Post.

^{Colbert by Cain’s side}

11.52 (06.52 EST) Quote of the Day: “All of these ads and debates
are just so negative.You think you have your mind made up, and then there is
craziness and more craziness.” Kathy Matasavage, an undecided voter
in South Carolina.

11.40 (06.40 EST) While Americans made history by choosing their first
black President in 2008, this time round, they could break with precedent
again if Romney is voted in, our Washington correspondent Alex
Spillius reports.

Mitt Romney, the strong favourite for the Republican nomination, is a
devout follower of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and
would be the first Mormon to hold office. In a country where nine out of 10
people say they believe in God, and 40 per cent attend church once a week or
more, it is often said that it is much better to have a strange God than
none at all.

America will have a Mormon or a Jewish president – each group makes up two
per cent of the population – long before it votes a conspicuous atheist into
the White House. Alastair Campbell told Tony Blair, “We don’t do God”, but
in the United States all politicians must do God.

11.30 (06.30 EST) While Romney may be dominating the top of the US
polls, he should be more than a little wary of Gingrich’s popularity in the
South Carolina ones, as the state has influence well beyond its size. The SC
Primary has selected every GOP nominee for three decades.

Ever since 1980, when Ronald Reagan won, every candidate who has won the GOP
primary in this Southern state of fewer than 5 million has gone on to claim
the Republican presidential nomination, reports
Washington Post, who give a little background on the battleground

South Carolina is a different battleground from the corn fields of Iowa and
predominantly white New Hampshire. The state is poorer, more conservative
and has a population that is 28 percent black. Voters don’t register by
parties so Democrats and independents enter the mix in the primary.

The state has also proven a second-chance for candidates who have stumbled
in earlier contests with their different constituencies.

^{Romney and his brood in South Carolina}

11.10 (06.10 EST) In light of the now-famous ABC News “open
marriage” interview with Marianne Gingrich, The
New York Times works its way through 50 years of Gingrich wives, who
seem to play the role of both emotional crutch and political sounding board
in his life. Sheryl Gay Stolberg on today’s front page of the NYT writes:

But more than a jilted spouse, Marianne Gingrich serves as a window into
the complicated psyche of a man who, those who know him say, seems to need a
woman by his side. Friends and colleagues offer that for all his ego and
bombast — “Grandiosity has never been a problem with Newt Gingrich,” one of
his presidential rivals, Rick Santorum, declared at Thursday’s presidential
debate — Mr. Gingrich has leaned on his wives to help project his vision of
himself.

^{Newt Gingrich, then speaker, took Marianne with him, and President
Carter, to the funeral of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin of Israel in 1995.}

10.52 (05.52 EST) A good piece in
Politico on Gingrich’s hypocrisy with the media – lambasting them at
debates while positively chummy with them by night.

The same candidate who on Thursday decried “the destructive, vicious, negative
nature of much of the news media” shows another face to the cadre of
reporters who follow his campaign day-to-day. He jokes with them, publicly
celebrates their birthdays, teases them about the early hour they are often
forced out of bed to cover his events.

It’s not unusual for Gingrich to chat with reporters, off-the-record, in the
hotel restaurant at the end of a long day on the campaign trail — and he
engages them to a degree that’s unheard of on the other campaigns.

^{It’s not unusual for Gingrich to chat with reporters off-te-record after
campaign events.}

10.40 (05.40 EST) As Jonathan Jones writes in the British
Spectator’s Coffee House blog, if Gingrich does take victory in
South Carolina and Rick Santorum drops out of the race – as seems likely,
especially if he finishes fourth behind Ron Paul – the former Speaker could
well follow it up with a win in Florida on January 31.

Two losses in states that he was expected to carry until the last couple of
days would certainly put a dent in Romney’s ‘inevitability’. But after
Florida the race could be trickier for Gingrich. Romney has a big advantage
in organisation and money, and most of the next few primaries are in states
where he should have an advantage: states like Nevada, Minnesota and
Michigan. And in the February state where you might expect Gingrich to be
strongest – Missouri – he’s not on the ballot.

10.23 (05.23 EST) As reported at 22.50 (17.50) Gingrich picked
up the most important endorsement of his presidential campaign yesterday –
Chuck Norris. The indomitable action star penned
a column for World Net Daily arguing that Gingrich has the
“experience, leadership, knowledge, wisdom, faith and even humility to learn
from his failures (personal and public) can return America to her glory
days.

Norris explains he agrees with Gingrich’s statement that there is no enemy
this year but Barack Obama. He says:

I’m tired of watching our country being torn to shreds by those who think
the answer is more government debt and control. I’m tired of being in
bondage to a tax system that robs US citizens like the King of England did
before the Revolution. I’m tired of watching our sovereignty being sold by
foreign loans and loose borders. And I will not sit back and merely watch
this decay and degradation of the US and then hand it over to my children
and grandchildren to deal with.

In 2008, Norris’ endorsement of Mike Huckabee propelled the former Arkansas
governor to the top tier of GOP candidates and resulted in his best
fundraising day ever. He then appeared in an ad with Huckabee, who explained
his answer to secure borders in America during a presidency would be two
words: “Chuck … Norris.”

10.00 (05.00 EST) Acording to quite
a smart Real Clear Politics chart
of the latest polling data, Romney and Gingrich, the two frontrunners,
are now the closest they have been in 10 days. Romney is 11 points out in
front with 31, with Paul and Santorum level pegging at 14 per cent.

While in the South Carolina primary, Former House Speaker Gingrich expands his
lead, pulling out two points in front of Romney with 32 per cent.

09.30 (04.30 EST) Good morning. Welcome back to our live reporting on
the South Carolina Republican primary as the battle between Newt Gingrich
and Mitt Romney moves into its fascinating final hours. The race has
definitely tightened up. A new poll from Public
Policy Polling is stating:

“Newt Gingrich heads into South Carolina election day as the clear
front runner in the state: he’s now polling at 37% to 28% for Mitt Romney,
16% for Rick Santorum, and 14% for Ron Paul.

“Gingrich’s lead has actually increased in the wake of his ex-wife’s
controversial interview with ABC…”

• South Carolina Republican primary: January 20
as it happened
• South Carolina Republican debate: January 19
as it happpened
• South Carolina primary buildup: January 19 as
it happened
• South
Carolina Republican debate: as it happened January 16
• New Hampshire Republican primary: as it
happened January 11
• New
Hampshire Republican primary: as it happened January 10
• New
Hampshire Republican primary: as it happened January 9
• New Hampshire primary debate: as it happened
January 8
• New Hampshire primary debate: as it happened
January 7
• Iowa Republican primary: as it happened
January 4
• Iowa
Republican primary: as it happened January 3
• Iowa
Republican primary: as it happened January 2

Here is our team covering the US elections: