President Obama "has run out of ideas - now he is running out of excuses," Romney told chanting supporters about a half-hour after the polls closed, sounding as if he were delivering a convention acceptance speech - along with a plea to Republicans in the next primary. "And tonight, we are asking the good people of South Carolina to join the citizens of New Hampshire and make 2012 the year he runs out of time."
Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich were battling for fourth place with more than half the vote counted. Both were looking ahead to next week's South Carolina contest, with a more conservative electorate and a fresh chance to try to consolidate religious conservatives behind them as the main alternative to Romney.
Santorum told supporters late Tuesday that his immigrant Italian grandfather "was not deterred by temporary setbacks.. . . We are going to go on to South Carolina."
Texas Gov. Rick Perry trailed far behind.
In the days leading up to the New Hampshire primary, rivals stepped up attacks on Romney's record as onetime chief executive of the investment bank Bain Capital, accusing him of destroying communities by laying off thousands of workers from the companies the firm purchased and flipped or reorganized.
"Is capitalism really about the ability of a handful of rich people to manipulate the lives of thousands of other people and walk off with the money?" Gingrich said earlier Tuesday.
Gingrich and Perry, who pulled out of New Hampshire to stump in South Carolina, led the charge. The attacks echoed a critique that Obama and Democrats have been making of Romney as a heartless corporate raider who does not relate to average Americans.
