Republican hopefuls take fight to Florida (Reuters)

COLUMBIA, South Carolina (Reuters) – After a bruising clash in South Carolina, Republican presidential frontrunners Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich will take their battle to a bigger stage when the campaign moves to Florida on Sunday.

Gingrich, a former U.S. House of Representatives speaker, thrashed Romney in the South Carolina primary on Saturday, suggesting the race for their party's nomination and the right to face President Barack Obama in November may last months more.

The largest of the early voting states by far, Florida presents logistical and financial challenges that appear to give an advantage to Romney's well funded campaign machine.

But Gingrich has momentum after coming from behind in South Carolina to win around 40 percent of the vote, followed by Romney with 28 percent. Rick Santorum, a former U.S. senator, was in third with 17 percent and U.S. congressman Ron Paul in fourth with 13 percent.

"We proved here in South Carolina that people ... with the right ideas beats big money," Gingrich told supporters after his victory in the conservative state.

After strong performances in a series of debates, Gingrich was seen by South Carolina voters as the most likely Republican to beat Obama, a Democrat, in the November 6 election.

They also rejected millionaire former businessman Romney's pitch that he is the best bet to fix a broken U.S. economy and win the White House.

Romney and Gingrich, who have attacked each other mercilessly in a series of negative television ads since December, face off in a debate in Tampa, Florida, on Monday night.

ROMNEY TAX SOLUTION?

Romney has stumbled over questions about his personal finances in recent debates and acknowledged last week that he only pays a 15 percent tax rate, much lower than that of most working Americans.

The former Massachusetts governor has so far resisted calls from rivals, and even ally New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, to release his tax returns.

To try to put the tax return controversy behind him, the Romney campaign has a plan to settle the issue next week, a Republican official said.

That is part of a strategy to be more aggressive against Gingrich, a formidable debater who nevertheless has personal and professional baggage that the Romney team could exploit. Romney accuses Gingrich of being a Washington insider.

"The choice within our party has also come into stark focus. President Obama has no experience running a business and no experience running a state. Our party can't be lead to victory by someone who also has never run a business and never run a state," Romney said on Saturday.

Romney saw his aura of inevitability erode in South Carolina after leading opinion polls by 10 percentage points a week ago.

In Florida, he leads Gingrich by 40.5 percent to 22 percent, according to a poll of polls by RealClearPolitics.com. Santorum, a social conservative who is from Pennsylvania, is third with 15 percent.

Campaigns must spend at least $1 million each week to reach voters in the sprawling southern state, according to local political officials. Romney's allies have already spent $5 million, mostly on ads attacking Gingrich. No other candidate has a significant presence in the state.

(Editing by Paul Simao)

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GOP presidential hopefuls dance around climate change (The Christian Science Monitor)

There was a time when Republicans were at the forefront of efforts to investigate – maybe even do something about – the impact of human activity on global climate.

John McCain was an early and persistent supporter of cap-and-trade efforts to reduce the greenhouse gases (mainly carbon dioxide) associated with climate change. So was Newt Gingrich, who went on to make a YouTube video ad – with then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, no less – where he said, “Our country must take action to address climate change.”

Now, Republican presidential hopefuls seem to be racing in the opposite direction – disavowing their past support for policy measures on climate – even any sense that there’s a problem to be addressed.

MONITOR QUIZ: Weekly news quiz for June 13-17, 2011

As Governor of Minnesota, Tim Pawlenty signed a state greenhouse gas law limiting emissions, led a regional climate partnership with Illinois, Iowa, Michigan, and Wisconsin, and he supported cap-and-trade. Since then, he’s flip-flopped.

At the Conservative Political Action Committee conference in Washington earlier this year he made his mea culpa.

“Have I changed my position? Yes," Pawlenty said. "But I'm not going to be cute about it, hem and haw, be dippy and dancy about it. Just saying yeah, it was a mistake. It was stupid. It was wrong."

Former US Rep. Sherwood Boehlert (R) of New York, a strong supporter of the environment, says he has "never been so disappointed in all my life in the pretenders to the throne from my party."

"Not one of them is being forthright in dealing with climate science," he told the Associated Press recently. "They are either trying to finesse it, or change previous positions to accommodate the far right. They are denying something that is as plain as the nose on your face."

To liberal critics, the answer is obvious: The influence of climate change denialists financially supported by the billionaire Koch brothers (David and Charles) and others tied to the oil industry.

Whether or not that’s true, there’s no denying that climate change (and environmental issues generally) carry less political weight than they did in recent years.

While a majority (52 percent, according to Gallup) still believes climate change is caused by human activities as opposed to natural causes (43 percent), that’s down from a high of 61 percent in 2007. Similarly, the number of Americans who believe the impacts of global warming already are being felt has dropped to fewer than half.

“Americans are clearly less concerned about global warming and its effects than they were a few years ago,” Gallup’s Jeffrey M. Jones reported in March. “The reasons for the decline in concern are not obvious, though the economic downturn could be a factor…. environmental concerns tend to take a back seat to economic matters when the economy is in poor shape.”

It’s also a clearly partisan issue. Much higher percentages of Republicans (i.e., conservatives) now say the issue has been overblown in the media (67 percent), and they’re much less likely to connect increases in temperature to human activities. Just 31 percent worry about it at all, less than half the rate for Democrats.

Thus, the shift in overall public attitude is largely driven by the growing influence of politically conservative thought, especially the tea party. That, in turn, drives the actions and assertions of presidential hopefuls facing a gantlet of party conservatives in next year’s primary elections and caucuses.

Presumed front-runner Mitt Romney’s tack has been interesting.

He has not given it the full genuflect that Pawlenty and Gingrich did.

(Campaigning in Manchester, New Hampshire, in late May, Gingrich, the former cap-and-trader, suggested that climate change is "the newest excuse to take control of lives" by "left-wing intellectuals." Campaigning at a house party, Gingrich was asked about “the climate/global warming problem.” He went off on a long professorial toot in which he pointed out that as an “amateur paleontologist” he observed that “It was substantially warmer in the age of dinosaurs when there were no cars, at least not that we’ve been able to find, and no factories.”)

Romney was more direct.

"I believe the world is getting warmer, and I believe that humans have contributed to that," he told a crowd at a town hall meeting in Manchester. "It's important for us to reduce our emissions of pollutants and greenhouse gases that may be significant contributors."

It was an “aha!” moment for ideological purists. “Bye, bye nomination” declared Rush Limbaugh, who says global warming is “one of the most preposterous hoaxes in the history of the planet.”

As the headline on one Huffington Post piece put it: “Mitt Romney Attacked For Being Reasonable About Climate Change”

Still, it’s not that Romney’s position differs at all from majority Republicans in the House, where cap-and-trade is dead and there’s unlikely to be any legislation addressing climate change.

Romney did get a shout-out from Al Gore.

“Good for Mitt Romney," Gore blogged. "While other Republicans are running from the truth, he is sticking to his guns in the face of the anti-science wing of the Republican Party."

Which was a little like President Obama praising Romney for the Massachusetts model on health care.

MONITOR QUIZ: Weekly news quiz for June 13-17, 2011

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