Gingrich pulls back on attacks

COLUMBIA, S.C. — Under pressure from some in his own party, Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich pulled back his public attacks on frontrunner Mitt Romney — at least for now.

Gingrich stuck to a largely subdued stump speech during two events Thursday in South Carolina’s capital, focusing instead on his plans for saving Social Security, creating jobs and boosting domestic energy production.

Gingrich is grasping for a campaign lifeline in South Carolina, which holds its primary Jan. 21, after a pair of disappointing fourthplace finishes in the contests in Iowa and New Hampshire. effectively answering an expected onslaught of attacks on his fiscal record. And do it in a matter of 10 days.

“Please pray for us,” Santorum recently told an audience in Greenville. “It’s a tough battle every day out there. And we need that hedge of protection.”

The former Pennsylvania senator engineered a surprisingly close secondplace finish in Iowa and then faded badly in New Hampshire.

Now, on what should be more favorable terrain, he is fighting to consolidate a fractured conservative GOP base in hopes of emerging as the single biggest threat to Mitt Romney — and notching his first victory in a state where Republicans for decades have voted in the primary for the party’s eventual nominee.