GOP candidates escalate rhetoric in South Carolina
(CNN) -- A day before the final debate and three days before the voting, Republican presidential candidates on Wednesday launched increasingly strident attacks against each other and President Barack Obama in the run-up to the South Carolina primary.
Front-runners Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich traded accusations involving honesty and tactics, while Rick Santorum criticized both men for what he called placing political expediency before ideological principles.
Gingrich and Texas Gov. Rick Perry also criticized Romney's past shift on the abortion issue, seeking to raise questions among South Carolina's powerful evangelical voting bloc.
The increasingly aggressive tone came amid signs of a tightening race in the nation's first Southern primary.
http://edition.cnn.com/2012/01/18/politics/campaign-wrap/
