The conservative trio pressed the candidates on an array of issues ranging from health care to abortion to the role of organized labor.  The Republican front-runner, Texas Gov. Rick Perry, was in South Carolina on Monday at another event across the state but was forced to cancel his appearance at the forum and return home to deal with the growing threat of wildfires around Austin.  Perry did manage to steal a measure of the spotlight, however, by rolling out a major Palmetto State endorsement from Rep. Mick Mulvaney, the freshman GOP congressman who defeated John Spratt last November and is enormously popular among conservative activists in the state.  Mulvaney had previously said he would not endorse but changed course Monday and said he would co-chair a team of economic policy advisers for the Perry campaign.  Perry's closest rival in the national polls, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, also stepped outside his comfort zone to appear at the event and face questions geared toward the type of conservative activists who bristle at the health care law Romney passed in the Bay State.  Romney stepped up his courtship of the tea party movement after Perry leapfrogged him in the polls, thanks in part to Perry's early appeal to both conservative activists and more business-minded Republican voters.  Over the weekend, Romney also addressed a tea party rally in New Hampshire.  Romney was asked about the health care law toward the close of the two-hour forum, and was given just one minute to deliver what is, at this point, his well-rehearsed answer.  Speaking directly to DeMint, a top supporter from his 2008 presidential bid who is still neutral in the 2012 race, Romney said the Massachusetts law would be one of his "biggest assets" in a general election fight against President Barack Obama.  "I'll say to him, why didn't you give me a call? I would have told you what to do right and what not to do," Romney said, defending the rights of states to make policy instead of the federal government.
Five of the Republican Party's leading presidential contenders traveled to South Carolina on Labor Day to kiss the ring of tea party kingmaker Jim DeMint at a first-of-its-kind forum devoted to the