15 Gennaio 2012
CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- With less than a week to go before South Carolina puts its own possibly decisive spin on the GOP presidential race, the state's voters already have been bombarded with more than 5,000 TV ads from the candidates and their deep-pocketed and secretive Super PACs.
That means, in the Columbia TV market alone, the average viewer could see a political ad 65 times by Saturday.
From their lounge chairs, S.C. voters are getting a barrage of contrasting images of the Republicans vying to challenge President Barrack Obama in the fall.
In some ads, Mitt Romney is the proven job creator; in others, the heartless corporate raider.
One minute, Newt Gingrich is the bold conservative heir to Ronald Reagan; the next, he's the corrupt Washington insider.
And Rick Santorum: family values champion or pork barrel king?
Add the campaign spots for and against the other three candidates -- Ron Paul, Rick Perry and Jon Huntsman -- and it translates into $10.3 million spent on the 2012 campaign's biggest air war yet.
Overall, the Romney campaign and his Super PAC, Restore Our Future, have spent $3.4 million combined in the state -- more than any of the others in the race.
The runners-up: Perry and his Super PAC, Make Us Great Again ($2.5 million), and Gingrich and his Super PAC, Winning Our Future ($1.9 million).
The 30- and 60-second spots are popping up on TV channels beaming out of Charleston, Columbia, Greenville-Spartanburg and Florence-Myrtle Beach.
Ads make their mark
GOP contenders still in the running are now crisscrossing South Carolina, meeting voters at rallies and in restaurants.
But for every hand they shake at the Lizard's Thicket diner in Lexington, S.C., thousands more see them on the local TV station's report on that meet-and-greet.
TV ads also are more predominant in the South Carolina leg of the campaign. New Hampshire voters saw about 2,800 ads. As of last week, S.C. voters already had sat through nearly twice that many.
Super PACs have accounted for 69% of all the TV ad spending.
They are private groups that can spend unlimited amounts of cash without having to disclose who their donors are. They also are supposedly independent, though most are headed by friends or former staffers of the candidates they're promoting.
These Super PACs can now "do the dirty work, (while) campaigns are able to rise above it and not put their names on stuff," South Carolina GOP strategist Scott Farmer told the State newspaper in Columbia. "They have completely rewritten the rule book this (election) cycle."
In Iowa, Romney, Perry and their Super PACs bought most of the ads.
Anti-Gingrich spots from Romney's Restore Our Future were so effective that Gingrich's lead in the polls evaporated and he finished fourth in the state.
Nasty has long been the hallmark of South Carolina campaigns. And many of the ads are so riddled with hyperbole and half-truths that they continue in that tradition.
But there also have been a few things to laugh about.
One Gingrich-paid ad casts Romney as a Massachusetts elitist by showing him speaking French.
A Romney PAC ad features a Photoshopped Gingrich in a sort-of airport terminal waiting for his "baggage" -- suitcases representing the $1 million he got from Freddie Mac and his other past political sins.
And on Friday, there was a report from ABC News that Charleston-born TV satirist -- and possible pretend-presidential candidate -- Stephen Colbert, would soon show up in TV ads purchased by his Super PAC.
The PAC, controlled by "Daily Show" host Jon Stewart, has purchased $10,000 in TV time on a Charleston TV station, the report said, and was negotiating a "substantial media buy in the Columbia market."(Tim Funk e Jim Morrill per "Detroit Free Press")
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