South Carolina, Mitt Romney | featured news

The rusty stains on Shirley Carter's home are a permanent reminder of her fight with the local steel mill, just down U.S. Highway 17 near the boat docks. No matter how many cans of industrial-strength acid she went through, the red tint on her property never seemed to go away....

Mitt Romney’s stunning loss in South Carolina was as broad-based as his win in the previous primary in New Hampshire, according to exit polls, raising new questions about his ability to reach a wide assortment of voters.

As South Carolina Republicans begin voting in the first primary of the south today, GOP insiders say that all the candidates have had their problems in Palmetto State, one reason why today's outcome has been so hard to predict.

With the crucial Republican presidential primary in South Carolina just hours away, front-runner Mitt Romney on Friday lowered expectations for how well he will do and acknowledged he is in a neck-and-neck race with Newt Gingrich.

On a separate issue, Gingrich told reporters that he paid 31 percent of his 2010 income in taxes, more than double the 15 percent Romney said he pays. A Gingrich spokesman said the 31 percent was the effective federal rate on his income. Gingrich declined to criticize Romney on the tax issue, saying instead that it made the case for his own proposal to put in place an optional 15 percent flat income tax. "My goal is not to raise Mitt Romney's taxes, but to let everyone pay Romney's rate," he said.

Former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman will withdraw from the Republican presidential race Monday and endorse front-runner Mitt Romney, according to a senior official with the Huntsman campaign.

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney has opened a wide lead over his rivals in the South Carolina primary election race, trouncing Newt Gingrich and gaining momentum in his march toward the party's nomination, a Reuters/Ipsos poll shows.

Presidential candidate Rick Perry's criticism of Mitt Romney's business past had a boomerang effect Thursday, costing him the support of a prominent Republican in South Carolina. Investment fund executive and top GOP donor Barry Wynn told The Associated Press he was leaving the Perry fold to endorse Romney, the former Massachusetts governor. Wynn said Perry's attacks on Romney's time at the helm of the private equity firm Bain Capital had crossed the line in a political party that values free-market capitalism.