Alone in South Carolina, Perry makes last-ditch pitch

By the time Texas Gov. Rick Perry branded Wall Street and Washington as “corrupt” on Tuesday, he’d left no doubt that he sees Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum as embodiments of what ails the twin capitals of money and politics.

He described Romney as a greedy Wall Street “vulture” indifferent to the plight of South Carolina workers who lost manufacturing plant jobs in corporate takeover deals that spun off millions of dollars for the former Massachusetts governor’s investment firm, Bain Capital.

“Instead of trying to work with them to find a way to keep the jobs and to get them back on their feet, it’s all about how much money can we make, how quick can we make it, and then get out of town and find the next carcass to feed upon,” Perry told about 100 seniors at the Sun City retirement complex here in upstate South Carolina.

And Santorum, by Perry’s account, was so badly infected with Washington’s back-scratching “virus” that in his days as a Pennsylvania senator, he wasted untold sums of taxpayer money on pork projects for members of Congress.

“You’ve got people like Rick Santorum, who’s voting for the ‘bridge to nowhere,’ who’s voting for a teapot museum, who’s voting for the Montana Sheep Institute — with no transparency,” Perry fumed.

The attacks were telling. For Perry, whose candidacy all but collapsed with his fifth-place finish last week in the Iowa caucuses, South Carolina’s Jan. 21 primary stands as a last chance to salvage his campaign.

His jabs at Romney, the front-runner in the latest South Carolina polls, are aimed not just at undercutting the ex-governor’s economic pitch, but also at promoting himself as a Washington outsider who would crack down on Wall Street abuses.

The blasts at Santorum are designed to damage a rival for the allegiance of conservative evangelicals, a major GOP voting bloc in the state. Perry’s most recent TV advertising in South Carolina has emphasized faith and values.

But Perry’s larger credibility issues, stemming from early debate gaffes, could dampen the impact with social conservatives.

“Right now, they don’t see Gov. Perry as having a chance, so they’re not going to coalesce behind him,” said James Guth, co-editor of “The Oxford Handbook of Religion and American Politics.”

Having skipped New Hampshire on the theory that regional kinship would lift his prospects in South Carolina, Perry has spent three days skewering Romney, his rhetoric growing steadily more caustic.

On Monday, Perry visited Gaffney, S.C., where a Bain takeover deal cost 150 people their jobs at a photo-album manufacturing company to the benefit, he said, of “greedy people on Wall Street.”

“They’re vultures that are sitting out there on the tree limb, waiting for the company to get sick, and then they sweep in, they eat the carcass, they leave with that, and they leave the skeleton,” Perry told the crowd Tuesday at Sun City.

An onslaught of TV ads in recent days could foreshadow a mean contest ahead in South Carolina, once the other candidates arrive Wednesday from New Hampshire.

Echoing Perry’s attack, Rep. Ron Paul of Texas has been running a blistering spot depicting Santorum as a corrupt Washington insider who pockets cash from lobbyists.

A Newt Gingrich ad goes after Romney, saying his economic agenda is “timid” while the former House speaker’s is bold. Supporters of Gingrich have said they would run a far tougher ad highlighting job losses that resulted from Bain takeover deals on Romney’s watch.

Other spots, notably Romney’s, have been mainly positive — so far.

“My test for the federal government is this,” Romney says in the ad he has been running most often this week. “Is this program so critical, so important, that it’s worth borrowing money from China to pay for it? It is a moral responsibility to believe in fiscal responsibility.”

In a bid for evangelical support, Paul, a physician, has played up his Christian faith and personal opposition to abortion in a spot featuring testimonials of female patients. Another Paul commercial shows veterans commending his patriotism, an apparent effort to inoculate himself against rivals’ attacks on his advocacy of a nonconfrontational approach to Iran.

But with the South Carolina stage to himself this week, Perry has set the tone for an 11-day brawl that could live up to the state’s reputation for nasty campaigns.

michael.finnegan@latimes.com