But the debate over Bain—a proxy for a broader argument about the rough and tumble of market capitalism—looks set to continue through the next primary in South Carolina, a state with a pronounced populist streak that is possibly the last chance for Mr. Romney's rivals to slow his march toward the nomination.
Newt Gingrich, one of the harshest critics of Mr. Romney's Bain years, acknowledged Wednesday that it was a tough argument, but his campaign said he has no plans to back off. A group supporting Mr. Gingrich's candidacy, Winning our Future, continued to hammer the issue, as did Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who described Mr. Romney as a "vulture capitalist" while spotlighting factories in South Carolina where he said Bain had cut jobs during Mr. Romney's tenure.
Supporting Mr. Romney were a number of Republicans, including two of his rivals for the nomination, who rallied around the former Massachusetts governor, raising the possibility that the spat could in fact strengthen his hand. "Capitalism without failure isn't capitalism," GOP candidate and former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. told an audience of mostly students in Columbia, S.C. He was joined by Texas Rep. Ron Paul, who said bashing Bain was a mistake.
The Republican nomination fight, careening into the Palmetto State, is opening philosophical and tactical divides within the GOP. Some Republicans see the attacks on Mr. Romney as undermining the party's traditional defense of markets and rugged capitalism, as well as their likely nominee, while also playing into the hands of Democrats seeking to make hay out of many of the same issues.
Conservative commentators have criticized Messrs. Perry and Gingrich for attacking Mr. Romney's business credentials, saying they were mimicking the Occupy Wall Street movement and channeling the Obama administration.
At a campaign event in Spartanburg, an audience member urged Mr. Gingrich to "lay off" attacking Mr. Romney's time at Bain. Dean Glossop said he was a longtime admirer of Mr. Gingrich and opposed Mr. Romney's candidacy, but he said the attacks on Mr. Romney's private-sector career were counterproductive.
At the event, Mr. Gingrich said he agreed that it was a difficult argument to make and turned to blaming President Barack Obama for making it difficult for Republicans to talk about capitalism. Gingrich campaign spokesman R.C. Hammond said Mr. Gingrich "agreed it was tough to argue, not that he will back off."
Afterward, Mr. Glossop, 47, said of Mr. Romney: "Let's not criticize his success as a capitalist; rather we should criticize his failure as a conservative."
Driving the attack on Mr. Romney isn't just the tactical advantage viewed by some of his rivals, but a shift in the GOP that has been evident since before the 2010 midterm elections. As the tea party has energized the Republican base, the party as a whole has been willing to countenance populist arguments more commonly associated with outlier candidates of past years such as Pat Buchanan and Ross Perot.
According to a compilation of thousands of interviews conducted for The Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll in 2011, blue-collar workers now are slightly more likely to call themselves Republicans than Democrats. And when Americans were asked last fall whom to blame for the country's economic problems, Republicans pointed a finger at Wall Street bankers just as often as Democrats did.
Still, the results in both Iowa and New Hampshire suggest that Mr. Romney isn't hurt by these trends as much as some of his opponents may think. In both states, polls of voters suggest he had solid support among both self-proclaimed conservatives and tea-party supporters. Exit polls in New Hampshire showed that Mr. Romney won convincingly among both groups.
Bain Capital was a pioneer in the business of buying up companies with the idea of turning them around and selling them for a profit. The firm notched some big successes, and Mr. Romney has claimed it helped create 100,000 jobs. Its tactics, however, which often included job cuts, have become tinder for a debate that has been consuming the party leading up to the South Carolina vote Jan. 21.
The theme hit a chord with a growing camp within the GOP that sees Bain as a kind of elite capitalist club out of sync with the idea that anyone can succeed with hard work. They say Mr. Romney's years as a private-equity manager at Bain could weigh on his candidacy, especially amid signs of rising antagonism toward financial elites.
"I support capitalism, but if somebody does anything that's kind of questionable, then we have the right to ask all the questions," said Jean Hampton, vice chairman of Carolina Patriots, a tea-party group based in Myrtle Beach.
It was a message Mr. Perry in particular hit hard on Wednesday. "I understand restructuring…but the idea that we can't criticize someone for these get-rich-quick schemes is not appropriate from my perspective," the Texas governor told voters at a restaurant rally in Lexington.
Rivals of Mr. Romney acknowledged Wednesday that South Carolina likely represents the last place to knock him off his stride. Messrs. Perry and Gingrich once enjoyed strong footholds here, but both did poorly in the first two contests and are running low on money and momentum. Mr. Gingrich nabbed less than 10% of the votes in New Hampshire and Mr. Perry a meager 1%.
Hitting back at his opponents, Mr. Romney said on several cable TV programs Wednesday that his resounding victory in New Hampshire proved the attacks against him not only fell flat, but backfired.
Speaking to reporters later, Mr. Romney said he was prepared to face questions about his time at Bain but was surprised the volleys came from Republicans. "We've understood for a long time that the Obama people would come after free enterprise," he said after he boarded his campaign plane to South Carolina. "Little surprised to see Newt Gingrich as the first witness for the prosecution."
The feud has astonished some of the state's top business figures. Barry Wynn, one of South Carolina's most prominent Republicans and chief executive of the private investment group Colonial Group Inc., said he found the attacks hard to stomach.
"The whole thing smacks of desperation and is anathema to what most Republicans believe," Mr. Wynn said. Pushing back, he and around a dozen other longtime Republicans plan to endorse Mr. Romney as a group Thursday morning.
One risk to the party comes from alienating Wall Street firms that after decades of support for Democrats have started to venture into the GOP fold. Managers and employees of hedge funds, for example, directed a majority of their contributions to the GOP during the most recent midterm election season, a pattern not seen since 1996, when the industry was much smaller.
Some finance executives said they were watching Mr. Romney's response closely, hoping he defends their business.
"What we're more curious about is how hard Romney will fight back against this line of attack," said Todd Klein, who helps run Legend Ventures LLC, a private-equity firm that invests in younger companies. "The open question in our minds is what kind of 'scrapper' Romney will be and whether he will play defense or offense on this issue."
Dick Harpootlian, chairman of the South Carolina Democratic Party, said the attacks could get real purchase in the state, where unemployment is nearly 10% and the average person earns less than $30,000 a year.
"If Romney ends up appearing to be Gordon Gekko saying 'greed is good,' that causes him major problems in South Carolina," Mr. Harpootlian said.
One fund-raiser for Mr. Perry, who is close to the campaign, said he thought that the attacks on Mr. Romney were "deplorable" and that it was time for the party to begin coalescing around a candidate.
However, a "super PAC" supporting Mr. Gingrich released a 28-minute film called "King of Bain: When Mitt Romney Came to Town," which features interviews with distraught people who say they lost their jobs at companies taken over by Bain.
The pro-Gingrich group, Winning our Future, said it plans to spend as much as $3.4 million on ads attacking Mr. Romney in South Carolina, many of them based on footage from the film.
In a written statement, the group drew a distinction between Wall Street and what it called traditional forms of capitalism. "Wall Street and true free enterprise are divorced as never before," the group said.
Some members of the buyout industry said that for all his criticisms of Bain, Mr. Gingrich once benefited from the business as an adviser to Forstmann Little & Co. That firm led lucrative takeovers of Dr Pepper Co., Gulfstream Aerospace Corp., Topps Co. and others, deals that helped make its recently deceased founder, Theodore Forstmann, a billionaire.
Mr. Forstmann was critical of the heavy use of borrowed money by some in the industry, calling these rivals "barbarians."
As an adviser to the firm, Mr. Gingrich attended meetings two or three times a year, though he didn't spend much time working on the firm's deals, according to a person close to the matter.
"The private-equity bashing by Newt is most ironic," says Scott Higbee, a partner at Partners Group, a Boston-based firm that invests about $25 billion in private-equity firms including Bain and Carlyle. "It seems like a case of a cornered animal grasping to maintain relevancy."
Mr. Gingrich's campaign didn't immediately return a call seeking comment.
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