BLYTHEWOOD, SC -- The vulture flies no more.

Gov. Rick Perry's address to about 40 diners at famed Southern cookin' joint Lizards Thicket Thursday offered a healthy helping of anti-Obama rhetoric with a side of swipes at the "insiders" who are running for the presidency.

But his least appetizing metaphor for Mitt Romney -- one in which he graphically compared Romney's former company Bain Capital to a vulture picking at the carcasses of damaged companies -- had vanished from his speech.

The Texas governor first unveiled the "vulture capitalism" term on Tuesday, echoing a similar line of attack to Newt Gingrich has used against the former Massachusetts governor.

Perry used the term three times in one speech yesterday but then appeared to abruptly drop it during later campaign stops.

The wave of Bain attacks has subsided as conservative commentators ripped Perry for being "anti-free-market" and providing fodder for Democratic critics of Romney, should the presumed frontrunner become the GOP's nominee.

In Blythewood, he began a sentence that sounded like a possible wind-up to a defense against those pundits.

"I'm a capitalist and I believe in the profit motive, but there is a point in time where we have to say 'Wait a minute, what is going on here?'" he began.

But instead of launching into the story of workers in Gaffney, SC laid off at the hands of Bain -- a staple for the last few days in South Carolina -- he dinged the US Treasury for its cozy relationships with Wall Street banks, a months-old critique.

Perry's tempered criticism comes against the backdrop of a defection by a top Perry backer, Barry Wynn, to Romney's campaign. Wynn told the Associated Press that the Texas governor's recent attacks on Romney's record at Bain had spurred his decision to switch sides in the primary.

Asked about the "vulture" capitalism swipe on a Fox News interview Thursday, Perry did not disavow the attack outright but implied that his examination of Bain's record could help voters determine if Romney is a "flawed candidate" before the general election.

"The fact is, this process is about winnowing out individuals and testing whether or not they're a flawed candidate or not," he said. "And I will tell you when people can point to where you made a quick profit and kicked people out of their jobs, that is an issue that has got to be addressed."

COLUMBIA, SC -- At a packed rally in South Carolina's capital city, Gov. Nikki Haley on Wednesday night defended the value of free markets in a proxy defense of the man she has endorsed for president, Mitt Romney.

"I am proud of all of our Republican candidates, but we have a real problem when we have Republicans talking like Democrats against the free market. We believe in free markets. We don't ever want people to come in and say that Boeing can hire and fire. We don't ever want people to go in to Michelin and say that they can make profits or they can't. We want companies to be able to do what is best for companies and during tough times you downsize and you make hard decisions and during good times you expand and you grow," Haley said. "That's what he's done. He's done what every one of us has tried to do."

The remarks came as Romney's rivals for the GOP nomination have seized on the former Bain Capital CEO's record in the private economy, and accused him of offenses as varied as practicing "vulture capitalism" (Texas Gov. Rick Perry) and "looting of companies" (Newt Gingrich).

Jason Reed / Reuters

Republican presidential candidate and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney speaks alongside South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley on Wednesday as they meet with supporters at the Hall at Senate's End in Columbia, S.C.

On Wednesday a Super PAC supporting Newt Gingrich released a 27-minute video attacking Bain -- and Romney's -- track record of sometimes overseeing the demise or bankruptcy of companies they invested in.

On his flight from New Hampshire to South Carolina on Wednesday, Romney said he expected such attacks would come during this campaign -- but not from his Republican colleagues.

"We've understood for a long time that the Obama people would come after free enterprise. I was a little surprised to see Newt Gingrich as the first witness for the prosecution, but I don't think that's going to hurt my efforts," Romney told reporters. "Frankly, if I cant take a few shots coming from my colleagues on the republican side, I'm not ready for Barack Obama."

As the GOP nomination race moves to South Carolina, a state with a famously bare-knuckle approach toward nominating presidents, Romney said he was ready for a whisper campaign about his faith, Bain, or anything else that might come up.

"Politics ain’t bean bags and I know it's going to get tough and no one's going to be happy if things are said that are untrue," Romney told reporters on his campaign plane. "But I know that is sometimes part of the underbelly of politics."

COULMBIA, S.C. -- For Rick Perry, the sprint towards South Carolina’s January 21st primary begins not after New Hampshire, but just hours after the winner of the Iowa caucus is announced.

The Texas governor's tour of South Carolina begins on Jan. 4 in Aiken County at 3:30 p.m. with a walk through downtown Aiken followed by a “Rally in the Alley” there. He then travels west to North Augusta (about 15 minutes away from Augusta, Georgia) to meet with voters at Al’s Family Restaurant.

While Perry’s efforts in South Carolina so far have not paid off much (he had 6 percent in a December NBC News-Marist poll of voters here) his campaign is betting that with its evangelical voters and large military community, South Carolina is more fertile ground for a Perry revival than New Hampshire.

Perry’s campaign is not the only one looking to generate early South Carolina buzz. Newt Gingrich, who said earlier this week that South Carolina is a must-win for him (his spokesman later tried to walk that comment back), will start his South Carolina tour in the Upstate on the morning of January 11th, a day after the New Hampshire contest.

Gingrich’s campaign has already announced that he will be in Rock Hill, near Charlotte, N.C, for a town hall at 9 a.m. Later that day, he will be in Spartanburg, another voter-rich Upstate region, for a luncheon with the county Republican Party and a town hall meeting at the Beacon restaurant, a popular stop for presidential hopefuls.

Later that night, Gingrich and his wife Callista will attend a private house party in Greenville, which guests will pay between $500 and $5,000 to attend.

The day before the January 21st vote, Gingrich will participate in a get-out-the-vote rally at Coker College in Hartsville, located in the northeastern Pee Dee region of the state.

And while Jon Huntsman is staking a big claim in New Hampshire, his three daughters will be in Columbia on January 5^th as guests on Pub Politics, an Internet talk show hosted by Republican consultant Wesley Donehue, a Bachmann adviser, and Democratic strategist Phil Bailey. 

COLUMBIA, S.C. -- In an interview with NBC’s Chuck Todd this week, Newt Gingrich said he did not need to win nominating contests in Iowa or New Hampshire as long as he won South Carolina.

“You have to be in the top three or four,” said Gingrich. “I would like to come in second in New Hampshire.” But, he continued, “You need to win South Carolina. Everyone who has won South Carolina has been the nominee."

And while Gingrich spokesman R.C. Hammond seemed to downplay that prediction, saying “no state is a must-win,” a memo obtained by Real Clear Politics today belies that sentiment.

The memo, written by new members of his Iowa team, said Gingrich is positioned to “perform consistently well in both Iowa and New Hampshire and then win in South Carolina and Florida.”

While every eventual Republican nominee since 1980 has in fact won South Carolina's primary, Gingrich is seeking to accomplish what no other candidate in the 30-year history of modern primaries has: a South Carolina victory after losses in the first two states.

The former House speaker stands in fifth place in Iowa, according to the NBC/Marist Iowa poll released Friday. And some Palmetto State Republicans doubt that Gingrich would be able to achieve victory here after losses in Iowa and New Hampshire, even in spite of the fluidity of the Republican field.

“No one has gone 0-for-2 and won South Carolina,” said Warren Tompkins, a longtime strategist here who worked on Mitt Romney’s 2008 campaign and today announced he would be advising the campaign on a volunteer basis.

One factor is the boost in fundraising and buzz brought on by an Iowa or New Hampshire victory. If Gingrich doesn’t have that momentum coming in to South Carolina, the path to a win for Mitt Romney here becomes clearer, some experts say.

Hammond countered: "The must-win is the nomination."

PUTTING IT ALL ON PALMETTO

Past candidates who downplay early states have done so at their peril, noted former South Carolina Republican Party chairwoman Karen Floyd, citing Rudy Giuliani’s Florida-centric bid in 2008 and Romney’s decision that year to pull out of South Carolina after New Hampshire.

“When they decided not to play in some of the carve-out states, they lost the earned media,” she said.

That earned media – cable chatter, word-of-mouth, online buzz -- could compensate somewhat for Gingrich’s inability to match his opponents’ big ad buys. A lack of that energy, however, could be problematic in South Carolina, a state driven more by media than retail politics.

“It’s not like suddenly he’s going to be able to spend a ton on TV ads,” said one unaligned national consultant who worked for Romney’s 2008 campaign and is familiar with South Carolina politics.

Gingrich’s top-four threshold might not be enough to quell a perception that he’s running out of steam, said Jim Dyke, a South Carolina-based national strategist.

“I think if he does not do very well -- one or two -- in Iowa, he’s going to have a further sinking, which is going to make it more difficult in New Hampshire and it’s going to make it extremely difficult in South Carolina," Dyke said.

But Clemson political science professor and Republican consultant David Woodard said he would not count Gingrich out here, saying he’s been impressed with the former speaker’s “unconventional” presence.

“He is working something that the others aren’t doing and it’s primarily this social media kind of thing,” he said, noting the volume of emails and Facebook bulletins he receives from Gingrich supporters (Woodard added the Bachmann campaign is also reaching him through social media).

S.C. FOR THE MASSACHUSETTS MORMON?

While Romney’s campaign has been setting low Iowa expectations for months, he is now leading some polls there, including the NBC/Marist poll, which showed him at 23 percent. He is garnering larger, more enthusiastic crowds than his campaign said they had anticipated.

That atmosphere is leading some observers in South Carolina to say he could ride a stronger-than-expected showing in Iowa, plus a New Hampshire win, to a victory here.

“They have done a masterful job of managing expectations,” Dyke said, adding that an outright win in Iowa  “would really solidify the argument that he’s the candidate who can win everywhere.”

That argument could be strengthened if Romney wins socially conservative South Carolina, some of whose voters balked at his Mormonism in 2008, according to the national consultant who worked on Romney’s campaign that year.

“You’re the Mormon from Massachusetts who flip flopped on social issues who just won in South Carolina. It beats the expectations. No one would expect it," the consultant said.

Dyke drew a parallel between Romney and 2008 nominee John McCain, whose record did not jibe perfectly with voters here but who eked out a 33 percent victory over Mike Huckabee, who took most of the Evangelical vote.

“[McCain’s] record wasn’t necessarily tailor made for this state, whether it was immigration or judges, but there was a recognition that he was the best candidate for the fall,” Dyke said.

Even if Romney doesn’t win in Iowa, he still has the ability to sustain his campaign without an Iowa fundraising boost.

“These other guys have to win states in order to stay alive,” the consultant said. “Mitt Romney doesn’t have to run a marathon, he just has to make sure that his terminal disease isn’t as fast as the other guys.”

Plus, Romney can invest in South Carolina’s relatively inexpensive media markets (he made a $230,000 broadcast ad buy here on Thursday) while simultaneously buying some of Florida’s much pricier airtime, the national consultant said.

“Florida is a must-win. And South Carolina is the perfect setup for it. Last time, they got cold feet [in South Carolina] and pulled the plug and they probably saved about half a million dollars. In the overall scheme of what that campaign spent, they spent more than that on rock climbing walls for the Iowa straw poll.”

While the Romney campaign isn’t investing in as much gym equipment this time around, they do have a low-key, but persistent, presence in South Carolina. In addition to holding a tele-town hall with voters here on Monday, Romney has a robo call, which Floyd received, in which he says he intends to “earn the trust of every person in the state of South Carolina,” according to Floyd.

Plus, in addition to Tompkins, Romney also signed on Luke Byars as an unpaid adviser – adding bulk to his three-person South Carolina team.

Romney’s sotto voce presence here, gradually crescendoing, could lay the groundwork for a Romney win in South Carolina -- but the persistence of a few other candidates past Iowa could complicate that calculus.

THE LONG SHOT AND THE WILD CARD

Rick Santorum’s recent Iowa surge (he’s in third at 15 percent in the NBC poll) has some observers here drawing comparisons to Mike Huckabee. the former Arkansas governor who campaigned, like Santorum, mostly on social issues. After winning in Iowa, Huckabee narrowly lost to McCain in South Carolina with 30 percent of the vote.

“I think Santorum could be the next Huckabee, I really do,” Woodard said, adding that the difference between 2008 and now is that “neither of the two frontrunners are a McCain. Neither Gingrich nor Romney have inspired the kind of loyalty that McCain could.”

But Dyke dismissed the Huckabee parallel, saying that Huckabee’s background as a pastor gave him a stronger connection to evangelical communities than Santorum has. “It’s just apples and oranges,” he said.

One candidate who could become a thorn in the side of any candidate in South Carolina is Ron Paul, who is expected to do well in Iowa (he's in second, with 21 percent, in the NBC/Marist Iowa poll) and has some support here (he took 8 percent of likely Republican voters in the most recent NBC/Marist poll here, third behind Gingrich and Romney).

Paul today also received the endorsement of former South Carolina treasurer Thomas Ravenel, who resigned after being indicted on a federal cocaine charge. In a Facebook post, Ravenel praised Paul’s position against drug prohibition.

Paul’s organization in South Carolina is not as robust as in Iowa -- and that's not even to mention that Paul does better in a caucus setting than a primary -- but his presence here is enough to vex any candidate looking to make South Carolina, where the 2008 nominee won by just a three-point margin, a firewall.

“It will be at least a three-way race, and Ron Paul’s not getting out. So it’s not like it’s as clean and clear as I think Speaker Gingrich is articulating it,” said Tompkins. But a Ron Paul victory in Iowa could be a rallying point for South Carolina voters lukewarm towards Romney, the national consultant said.

“If Ron Paul comes in first, then all of a sudden there’s a scary bogey man we’ve all got to rally around – look, Mitt might not be our guy but we can’t let it be Ron Paul.” Regardless of the various scenarios that pundits will no doubt be gaming out between now and the South Carolina primary, one fact remains certain: a win here, preceded by losses in Iowa and New Hampshire, would be a first in South Carolina’s 30-year history of picking Republican nominees.

NBC's Alex Moe contributed

COLUMBIA, S.C. -- While Rick Perry makes an all-out sprint in Iowa, he’s keeping a hand in South Carolina by releasing a robo-call featuring Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, who is campaigning for Perry in the Hawkeye State.

In the call, acquired from sources within the Perry campaign, Jindal says Perry’s campaign is “finishing strong in Iowa,“ adding that Perry is a “consistent conservative who will completely overhaul Washington” and who “is not afraid to tell the truth about the danger our country is in.”

“South Carolina can make sure that we have a conservative nominee. I believe Rick Perry is the strong conservative we need,” Jindal continues on the 23-second robo call.

Jindal, a fellow southern governor with a high national profile, hit the trail with Perry in Iowa last week, at one point correcting the Texas governor about details in his tax plan.
 
Listen to the audio here. The full script of call:

Hi, this is Governor Bobby Jindal. I’ve been on the road with Rick Perry in Iowa where his campaign is finishing strong. Governor Perry is a consistent conservative who will completely overhaul Washington. Rick Perry is not afraid to tell the truth about the danger our country is in. South Carolina can make sure that we have a conservative nominee. I believe Rick Perry is the strong conservative we need. Paid for by Rick Perry.org, Inc.

GREENVILLE, S.C. -- South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley told NBC News that she started from a “brand new slate” before deciding to endorse Mitt Romney for the 2012 Republican nomination, even as she supported his first presidential bid.
 
“When I looked at all the candidates, what was so impressive is I’m no longer looking at a candidate that wants to win,” Haley told NBC in a phone interview today. “I’m looking at a leader that’s actually thought about what he’s going to do the first 30 days as president.”
 
Haley said one of her defining criteria for endorsing this time around was that she didn’t want “anyone that had anything to do with the chaos which is Washington D.C.”
 
“I didn’t want to support anyone who’s been involved or has any relationships in Washington,” she continued.
 
Haley denied, however, that she was taking an implicit jab at Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker who's forced to defend his relationships with Washington entities like Freddie Mac during his career since leaving COngress on the campaign trail.
 
“You’re not going to see me criticize any of the candidates. I have great respect for the candidates,” she said. “What I feel good about is I don’t have to bring down any other candidate to make Mitt Romney look good.”
 
Gingrich is surging with Republican voters here, leading the field in a recent NBC/Marist poll with 42 percent of likely primary voters to Romney’s 23 percent.
 
Haley also suggested that electability was a big issue in her decision-making process.
 
“This is the one candidate that President Obama continues to go after time and time again shows me that he knows that’s the candidate that can beat him,” she said.
 
Haley also pushed back on the notion that Romney isn’t spending enough time in South Carolina, as some top lawmakers, as well as South Carolina Republican Party chairman Chad Connelly recently said.
 
“I think the fact that Gov. Romney is coming here today, I think the fact that he’s going to be here tomorrow, the fact he’s going on the air on TV shows his commitment to South Carolina and shows he’s going to work hard to earn everybody’s support here in the state,” she said.