(Image source: Wikimedia Commons)
BY CHRISTINA HARTMAN
If it ain’t dirty, it ain’t South Carolina primary politics.
The state’s voters head to the polls Saturday -- amid a barrage of negative campaigning.
GINGRICH AD: “Massachusetts moderate Mitt Romney. He can’t be trusted. I’m Newt Gingrich and I approve this message.”
RON PAUL AD: “Rick Santorum. A record of betrayal. … I’m Ron Paul and I approve this message.”
And then there’s this:
A fake email CNN says was sent to state GOP activists as a so-called “Breaking News alert.”
It reads in part, “A source close to Marianne Gingrich tells CNN that former House Speaker Newt Gingrich forced her to abort a pregnancy conceived during the affair that preceded (sic) her marriage to Gingrich.”
But CNN’s Peter Hamby reports, the network did NOT send out that alert, saying it, “appears to be a last ditch attempt to halt Newt Gingrich's late momentum in South Carolina...”
CNN notes, the network doesn’t know how many people got the fake alert, but that it has confirmed two unnamed members of the state’s GOP Executive Committee were among them.
In recent days the Gingrich campaign was rocked by allegations from his ex-wife Marianne, who told ABC in an exclusive interview...
GINGRICH: “He said yes, but you want me all to yourself. Callista doesn’t care what I do.”
REPORTER: “What was he saying to you, do you think?”
GINGRICH: “Oh, he was saying he wanted an open marriage.”
Gingrich the candidate is now married to the woman with whom he admits he cheated on ex-wife Marianne. And while critics have gone on the attack over the “open marriage” allegations -- observers say the fake email alert alleging Gingrich forced his ex-wife to have an abortion -- is just par for the course in South Carolina.
MSNBC: “South Carolina has a history of being a laboratory for dirty tricks.”
BLOOMBERG: “...the rough and dirty South Carolina primary?”
FOX NEWS: “...that is a place that historically there has been a lot of dirty politics.”
Marianne Gingrich hasn’t publicly made the abortion claim -- so where did it come from? New polls have Gingrich leading or running neck-and-neck with Romney in South Carolina, and The Daily Kos asks...
“If it walks like Karl Rove and it talks like Karl Rove ... it couldn't be Mitt Romney, could it?”
Then again, conservative activist and RedState blogger Aaron Gardner speculates...
“I'd wager this fake CNN email came from either Paul or Obama.”
No one has claimed responsibility for the email, and the former Speaker himself made no mention of it at a campaign stop Friday.
