FLORENCE, S.C.–Republicans John McCain and Mike Huckabee touted their economic credentials in South Carolina Friday on the eve of the South's first vote for U.S. presidential nominees, as rival Mitt Romney pressed his advantage out West in Nevada.
Democrats Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama campaigned in Nevada before its caucuses on Saturday, criticizing President Bush's plan to help keep the economy out of recession because they said it was too late and did too little.
Arizona Sen. McCain sounded inclined to go along with a stimulus plan to lift the U.S. economy but railed against government spending at campaign stops in Myrtle Beach and Florence, South Carolina, as he sought to build on his lead over Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor.
McCain criticized Bush for signing a recent spending bill that he said contained 9,200 "pork barrel" projects, or those pushed by special interests, worth $17 billion, saying such bills should be vetoed.
"As a Republican, I stand before you embarrassed, embarrassed, that we let that spending get out of control," McCain said, adding he was not surprised the economy was stumbling.
The South Carolina Republican primary Saturday is the first of the state-by-state nominating contests to choose U.S. presidential candidates to take place in the southern United States. It will serve as a test of the candidates' appeal among socially conservative Christian voters.
McCain held a 7 percent lead over Huckabee, 29 percent to 22 percent, in a Reuters/C-SPAN/Zogby poll released Thursday, but Huckabee, a Southern Baptist preacher, was hoping his Southern roots and religious leanings would boost his appeal among South Carolina's social conservatives.
NASCAR Factor
McCain countered by campaigning with racing legend Cale Yarborough, an acknowledgment of the influence that NASCAR stock car racing crowds have on Republican politics in the South.
Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, was running a distant third in South Carolina and traveled west to campaign in Nevada, where a new poll by the Las Vegas Review-Journal showed him with a 15-point lead over McCain in that state's Republican nominating contest. Nearly 7 percent of Nevadans share Romney's Mormon faith.
"I would like to win in South Carolina but I know Senator McCain has a strong lead. But I think we may well surprise folks by how well we do there," Romney said.
Democratic presidential candidates also campaigned on Friday for Nevada's presidential nominating race, sharply criticizing Bush's economic stimulus plan aimed at lifting the economy and avoiding a recession.
"I don't think it does enough," New York Sen. Clinton told a group of workers in a small printing business in Las Vegas. "It talks about giving direct payments to people, which is good, I'm for that... (But) it leaves out 50 million working Americans, people who are on fixed incomes, who are seniors."
Illinois Sen. Obama also criticized Bush's plan, saying it came too late and left out tens of millions of workers and senior citizens. He also criticized Clinton, accusing her of changing her own stimulus proposals in recent days.
"This is a larger point," he told a big crowd in Reno. "The American people don't want a president whose policies change with the moment."
A Reuters/C-SPAN/Zogby poll Friday showed Clinton with a 5-point lead over Obama in Nevada, 42 percent to 37 percent, with former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards a distant third at 12 percent.
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