Video: Gingrich surging in South Carolina

The InsiderAdvantage poll of South Carolina likely Republican primary voters shows Newt Gingrich surging, coming within a statistical tie of Mitt Romney.

The poll of 726 registered voters was completed Wednesday night and offered the following results:

Romney -- 23 percent

Gingrich -- 21 percent

Santorum -- 14 percent

Paul -- 13 percent

Huntsman -- 7 percent

Perry -- 5 percent

Read more on Newsmax.com: Poll: Gingrich Surging in South Carolina 

Three new polls show former House Speaker Newt Gingrich gaining on Mitt Romney in South Carolina and emerging as the clear conservative choice of voters who are not backing the former Massachusetts governor for the Republican presidential nomination.

An Insider Advantage/Majority Opinion Research survey completed on Thursday shows that Gingrich is actually in a statistical tie with Romney in South Carolina, with 21.3 percent of the vote to Romney’s 23.1.

Gingrich leads Romney in several demographic groups, including voters 18 to 29 years old, black voters, male voters, and Independents.

Ron Paul and Rick Santorum each received 13 percent of the vote.

The latest Rasmussen Reports poll of likely Republican voters in South Carolina finds Romney ahead with 28 percent of the vote, but Gingrich has moved into second place with 21 percent. Santorum had been in second a week ago, but has now fallen back to 16 percent, dead even with Paul.

And an American Research Group (ARG) poll completed Thursday shows that Gingrich has closed the gap with Romney to just four points in South Carolina. Romney drew 29 percent of the votes, down from 31 percent a week earlier, while Gingrich rose from 24 percent to 25 percent. Santorum, meanwhile, plunged from 24 percent to just 7 percent, and Paul now has 20 percent of the votes.

The ARG survey also found Gingrich leading Romney among voters who say they are supporters of the tea party, 28 percent to 24 percent. Among evangelical Christians, Gingrich gets 40 percent of the vote, followed by Rick Perry with 15 percent, Romney with 13 percent, Santorum with 12 percent, and Paul at 10 percent.

That poll also shows that Paul has overtaken Romney as the favorite among Independents, beating Romney by a margin of 29 percent to 27 percent.

Read more on Newsmax.com: 3 Polls Show Newt Gaining on Romney 

Million Dollar Question To Obama: ‘Do You Take Any Personal Responsibility For Your Administration Creating’ Current Economic Conditions ???

Imagine that you had the chance to sit down with the President of the United States and you could ask him any question. What would you ask?

Many of us would probably try to find out if he thought his economic initiatives were a mistake and that they should be altered or discontinued.

What do you think he would say?

Well, you don’t have to imagine any longer because ABC affiliate WVEC’s David Alan asked for you.

“How have we become a country where so many members of the middle class go to bed at night wondering if they going to be able to keep their homes and put food on the table and send their kids to college?” Alan asked the president. “Do you take any personal responsibility for your administration creating that condition?”

“We didn’t create the condition. We haven’t solved it fully yet because it was three decades in the making,” President Obama replied.

Watch the president’s response (via WVEC):

“I mean, if you look at the trend lines, essentially what’s happened is that because of automation, because of globalization, you had a lot of manufacturing move out of the United States. Businesses got more efficient, they needed fewer workers, they had more leverage over workers, and all this added up to a tougher time for middle class families,” the president explained.

So, if one is to understand the president correctly, the current economic crisis facing middle-class America was created by Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush? And are we to believe that it has been exacerbated by “automation”?

While one could argue that Alan’s question may have been a bit loaded, and that it was specifically designed to prompt an admission of failure from the president, it is very difficult to view President Obama’s response as anything but “passing the buck.”

The president continued, explaining his plans to “grow the middle-class” and then arguing in favor of his economic policies.

“The good news is that we still have the best universities in the world, the most innovative businesses in the world the best workers in the world, [and] the freest market system in the world,” the president said.

First, didn’t the president just blame automated innovation for shrinking the middle-class? Second,Boeing might disagree with his assessment that the U.S. has the “freest market system in the world.”

“We’ve seen our exports go up, we’ve now seen 21 months of job growth (in the private sector), so we’ve got all the tools to refocus and make sure that we’re growing our middle class again,” the president said. “But we’re going to have to do some smart things to do it: improve our education system, invest in infrastructure, invest in basic science and technology, and make sure the rules of the road are fair and that everybody is doing their fair share.”

Again, there seem to be some serious discrepancies in the president’s claims. First, “21 month of job growth”? In what sector?

“The fact is, new jobs are being added at a far lower rate than a decade ago, as the chart below shows. And it’s that tepid job growth that explains America’s unacceptably high unemployment rate,” writes Mike Brownfield of The Heritage Foundation.

Indeed, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics would show that the president’s “21 months of job growth” hasn’t worked out too well for many Americans:

Secondly, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) must be thrilled to hear the president’s pledge to reinvest U.S. resources in science and technology. Recently, they’ve been a little, what’s the word, “underutilized”?

And then there’s the president’s oft-repeated call for the wealthy to pay their “fair share.” Even though “fair share” has been questioned, dissected, and disputed (almost to the point of nausea), no one from the Obama administration has offered to define what that actually looks like. Perhaps they will continue to repeat it until no one questions it any more.

Click here to watch a higher-quality version of the video.

(h/t Weasel Zippers)