AUGUSTA -- You might consider the bare-knuckle campaigning going on just over the state line in South Carolina either a spectator sport or a foreshadowing of things to come.
The latest round of political advertising in the Republican primaries has spilled across the border into this town, giving some Georgians a taste of a particularly unsavory campaign season of political action committee attack ads two months before Georgia holds its own primary in March.
Candidates and the independently operated and funded Super PAC advocacy groups are on a pace to pour about $11.3 million into campaign ads for the Jan. 21 primary. About 5,000 ads already have run. The pace and saturation of commercials picked up dramatically when the candidates rolled out of New Hampshire and into South Carolina last week.
"In the Greenville market alone they spent 350 grand in the previous four weeks, and $1.5 million in the last three days," said Jim Cox, a 28-year Augusta political consultant and advertising veteran who has been watching and assessing the tactics and tracking expenditures from this side of the state line.
“It’s all about timing," he said. "When election day gets here, you don’t want to leave any money on the table.”
The nastiness that started with anti-Newt Gingrich Super PAC attack ads in Iowa and then scorched through New Hampshire has escalated into a kind of carpet-bombing campaign in South Carolina that worries some Georgia Republicans watching from afar.
They fear the mud-slinging between Republican contenders will irreparably hurt their party's chances of knocking off President Barack Obama in November. They say some of the ads seem to assail core Republican values, particularly one from the pro-Gingrich Super PAC Winning Our Future that bashes front-runner Mitt Romney for his work with Bain Capital.
A 28-minute movie released in tandem with the ads "was brutal," said former Augusta Mayor Bob Young, a Republican who served in the Bush administration. “It was all about how bad his business was. I thought the Republicans were the party of free enterprise and capitalism? I don't get it.”
Not all the ads, which are bunched in blocks around morning, noon and evening local newscasts, are slash and burn. A spot from the Gingrich campaign compares him with three pillars of the political right -- Sen. Barry Goldwater, President Ronald Reagan and former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.
“Leaders make things possible,” intones the narrator. “Exceptional leaders make them inevitable. Newt Gingrich belongs in the category of the exceptional."
An ad for Ron Paul placed by Super PAC Santa Rita describes him as the “face of liberty” and a candidate who’s an exact fit for South Carolina values in a field of self-absorbed contenders.
“Ron Paul has a consistent record of fighting for what South Carolina cares about most," says the narrator. "Have they fought for you? Candidates like Mitt Romney stand for themselves. Ron Paul stands for you.”
The most stinging punch thrown so far from across the border may be an ad from Gingrich, who vowed to take off the gloves after losing in Iowa. The Gingrich ad claims Romney "can't be trusted" because he's flip-flopped his position on abortion.
“What happened after Massachusetts moderate Mitt Romney changed his pro-abortion position to pro-life?" a female narrator asks in the commercial. "He governed pro-abortion.”
If Georgia Republicans are watching the campaign with keen interest and, for some, trepidation, other Augustans said they've seen enough of the toxic stuff spilling across the Savannah River.
"It seems like the more I watch on TV and the Internet the more the negativity rises by the day," said David Bartlett, a 45-year-old Augusta high school teacher who described himself as an independent. "The more they have engaged in the attacks on each other, the less they have talked about the issues. I think they're shooting themselves in the foot."
Emily MaKuch, 34, an out of work massage therapist, said she can't turn the sound down or switch channels fast enough when one of the commercials comes on. "I watch for a while, but then I just started turning it off," she said. "I couldn't take listening to it anymore."
That's sweet music as far as Lowell Greenbaum is concerned. He's a rapt watcher of the ads, and chairman of the Richmond County Democratic Party. He said it's a kind of poetic justice that Republicans -- many of whom supported the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that allowed the Super PACS to come into existence with unlimited corporate funding -- have been the first targets of all that unleashed firepower.
“They say that if Romney wins in South Carolina it’s over,” Greenbaum said. “Of course, I’m rooting for it to go on, because these ads are ruining the Republicans' chances of winning in November. They’re tearing each other apart.”
At a Saturday breakfast, members of the Richmond County Republic Party talked about the campaign, how ugly it's been at times, but how important it is for the party to unite to reclaim the White House. Chairman Bob Finnegan urged everybody to drive across the border Tuesday to Aiken, S.C., to attend a Republican rally of all the candidates.
"This will be a different format," he said. "It will be a chance for the candidates to tell us what they're going to do, instead of what the other guy didn't do."
News services contributed to this article.
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