Washington, Nov 12: Mitt Romney looked to build on his growing strength in the Republican presidential race, promoting his plans to bolster the U.S. economy Friday while his rivals tried to mend their struggling campaigns.
Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, campaigned in South Carolina, a politically important state where the Republican contenders will meet for a debate Saturday.
His strategy is to maintain the steady, it's-all-about-the-economy campaign that's landed him in the top tier and, behind the scenes, prepare for any of his rivals to rise in the race to be the Republican challenger to President Barack Obama.
“I know there will be one or two others that will be doing well in the polls, that'll be you know, be real contenders. That's the nature of the process,” Romney told reporters after spending Friday campaigning at a barbecue restaurant near Greenville, South Carolina.
The difficulties of two of his main opponents have given a boost to Romney with less than two months to go before the Iowa caucuses, the first nominating contest.
Romney's closest rival, businessman Herman Cain, was in New York doing interviews defending himself against allegations he sexually harassed women in the 1990s.
And Texas Gov. Rick Perry was spending nearly $1 million airing ads on the conservative Fox News cable channel as he hoped to bounce back from a disastrous debate Wednesday, when he couldn't remember the name of the third of three government agencies he said he would abolish.
Perry was briefly a front-runner after entering the race, but fell into the bottom tier of candidates after a series of weak debate performances. Wednesday's blunder was his worst moment yet, becoming the talk of American politics and fodder for television comedians.
National donors privately worry that he won't be able to survive the gaffe. “It's not helpful,” Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad told The Associated Press on Friday.
Perry will have one more opportunity to redeem himself at Saturday's debate, which will focus on foreign policy. Previous debates have dealt almost exclusively with the economy, which Republicans see as Obama's greatest weakness ahead of next November's election.
Cain, the former chief executive of Godfather's Pizza, avoided the early voting states on Friday as he continued to face questions about the sexual harassment allegations. He was in New York for fundraisers, foreign policy briefings and interviews with Fox News Channel and the New York Post.
Cain conceded on Fox that his campaign might have to moderate its approach to the allegations. He has strongly denied the accusations against him.
Private polling suggests the harassment controversy has taken a bite out of Cain's once-solid lead in Iowa. And a new nationwide CBS News poll out Friday indicates he has lost support among women.
The CBS News poll, conducted Nov. 6-10 during the span of both crises, suggests a three-way tie for the nomination between Cain, Romney and a resurgent Newt Gingrich among Republican primary voters.
The CBS News poll said Cain's support among Republican women has dropped since late October, from 28 percent then to 15 percent now.
Taken together, Cain and Perry's woes have Republicans privately wondering about yet another conservative alternative to Romney: Gingrich, the former House Speaker.
Gingrich is the fiery Georgian who led the Republican Party's 1994 takeover of the House of Representatives after 40 years in the minority. He eventually lost his leadership post and left the House after clashing with President Bill Clinton over taxes and an unpopular government shutdown.
But Gingrich is just the latest conservative candidate to begin to emerge as a possible alternative to Romney, who has held a steady though not breakaway lead in the polls and has run his campaign without major gaffes or problems.
