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Newly empowered outside groups have spent more than $13 million to shape the unfolding presidential contest and are racing to deploy television and direct-mail attacks in South Carolina and other early GOP battleground states, federal elections data and interviews show.The spending is nearly double the $7.9 million outside groups spent at this point in the 2008 campaign, according to tally by the non-partisan Center for Responsive Politics — demonstrating the outsize influence new "super PACs" are having on the GOP primary fight. Leading the way: Restore Our Future, a super PAC backing Republican Mitt Romney, which spent more than $3.3 million on direct-mail and advertising to pummel former House speaker Newt Gingrich in Iowa, mulberry bagswhere he finished fourth this week after briefly leading the polls. The group, operated by former Romney aides, already has spent nearly $1.1 million in South Carolina and Florida combined, ahead of this month's primaries in those states. Super PACs are a new weapon in politics, spurred by recent federal court rulings that allow unlimited corporate and union spending in political advertising. They are barred from direct coordination with the candidate's campaign, but face no restrictions on how much they can raise or spend to support or attack politicians."The sky's the limit," Columbia Law School campaign-finance expert Richard Briffault said. "We are back to the pre-Watergare era of unlimited amounts of money."In many cases, the PACs are spending more than the candidates. The Red, White and Blue Fund, a super PAC backing Republican Rick Santorum, boasts that it outspent Santorum 20-to-1 in Iowa advertising. Gingrich has denounced the onslaught of outside group ads. But a super PAC supporting his campaign went on the offensive this week, mulberry saleposting a 2008 John McCain attack ad — "A Tale of Two Mitts" — on its website. "We intend to rise to the occasion," said Rick Tyler, a former Gingrich aide and a senior adviser to the group, Winning Our Future. He decried super PACs' potential to "usurp the candidate's" message. "But these are the rules, and we'll play by them."Most of the new groups don't have to disclose their donors until Jan. 31, the day of Florida's primary and weeks after voters in New Hampshire and South Carolina have cast their ballots.mulberry bags for sale"We may find the Republican nomination campaign is all but wrapped up before we know who's behind these committees," said Anthony Corrado, a campaign-finance expert at Colby College in Maine. "It's legal, but it reduces accountability in the system."