By Greg Mcinerney

The Occupy movement is approaching its fourth month and the self-termed “99 percent” have transitioned from a fringe protest group to one that, some say, might help decide the result of the 2012 presidential election.

The race for the Republican nomination has been volatile so far, with figures like Michelle Bachmann and Herman Cain topping the polls only to see their support dwindle. Yet it appears it may now be what the Guardian newspaper is describing as a “two horse race” between the former governor of Massachusetts, Mitt Romney, and former Republican Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich. A recent poll conducted by the Washington Post and ABC News, put Gingrich on 33 percent in Iowa, with Mitt Romney on 18 percent.

Romney, whose poll numbers have been continuously falling in recent weeks in favor of Gingrich, has expressed a mixed view on the Occupy movement. In an early October interview with the National Journal, Romney described the protest movement as “dangerous” and “class warfare.”

Throughout October, however, support for the movement began to grow. According to an Opinion Research Corporation (ORC) International poll released in early November, 36 percent of adult Americans said they agree with the overall positions of Occupy Wall Street, up from 27 percent when the survey was first conducted in early October.

Romney then issued a revised stance on the movement during a campaign rally in New Hampshire.

“I look at what’s happening on Wall Street and my own view is, boy I understand how those people feel,” he said.

Gingrich is now the Republican front runner with a 21-point lead nationwide, according to a recent Rasmussen poll. He also currently commands an eight-point lead in the key primary state of Iowa according to a Des Moines Register report, and has been consistent in his opposition to the movement and their aims. Speaking during a Republican debate in late November, Gingrich dismissed the group as a leftist fringe movement.

“The Occupy movement’s premise that we owe them something is a pretty good symptom of how much the left has collapsed as a moral system in this country and why you need to reassert something as simple as saying to them, ‘Go get a job right after you take a bath,’” he said.

Both men are campaigning for the right to stand against Barack Obama in next year’s presidential election. The Obama campaign has been keen to show its solidarity with the movement’s cause. Appearing on “Good Morning America,” Obama’s senior advisor David Plouffe expressed the administrations sympathy for the protesters.

“If you’re concerned about Wall Street and our financial system, the president is standing on the side of consumers and the middle class,” he said.

Some on the Republican right see this apparent connect between the Obama team’s rhetoric and the Occupy movement’s as proof that it at the behest of the Obama campaign team to help aid support for his 2012 reelection bid. Former Republican Mayor of New York, Rudy Giuliani, voiced this concern at a rally hosted by conservative think tank, “Americans for Prosperity.”

“The Occupy Wall Street movement wouldn’t have happened, but for Barack Obama’s consistent and blatant class warfare”

However the Occupy movement has been openly critical of Barack Obama and his administration. He was recently interrupted by Occupy protesters in Manchester, N.H. while giving a campaign speech. Also a fundraiser for the Obama presidency run was picketed by around 500 Occupiers last Wednesday in New York.

Indeed there are some analysts who believe that Obama’s endorsement of the Occupy Movement could sink his bid for reelection. David Paul Kuhn, former senior political writer for political news site Politico.com, sees correlations between the occupiers and the anti-Vietnam movement of the late 1960s, and believes this comparison rather than vindicating Obama’s endorsement of the Occupy protests, serves to foreshadow the end to his presidency.

“Obama and his team have decided to harness public anger at Wall Street,” he wrote in “Why Obama Cannot ‘Occupy Wall Street’ and Win” on realclearpolitics.com. “According to the Washington Post, that theme is ‘a central tenet of their re-election strategy.’ But it’s one thing to vent public anger. It’s quite another to ally with the angriest.”