GOP rivals target Romney during Sunday debate in N.H.
He maintains wide lead in Granite State surveys
CONCORD, N.H. — Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney faced a barrage of criticism from his rivals about his honesty, his record and his ability to defeat President Obama in a combative debate Sunday, just 48 hours before a New Hampshire primary that could redefine the Republican presidential race.
“Can we drop a little bit of the pious baloney?” former House speaker Newt Gingrich asked after Romney decried career politicians who repeatedly run for office. “You ran and you lost” for the U.S. Senate and for the 2008 presidential nomination. “You’ve been running since at least the 1990s.”
Former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum accused Romney of backing away from what would have been a tough fight in 2006 for a second term in the statehouse. “If his record was so great as governor of Massachusetts, why didn’t he run for re-election?” Santorum asked. “We want someone who won’t bail out and won’t run.”
For his part, Romney kept his temper and defended his record as “a solid conservative” who “brought important change to Massachusetts.” In a dig at Gingrich, who served as speaker nearly two decades ago, Romney said that “leading conservatives in today’s world who are fighting the conservative battles of today” had endorsed him, including New Hampshire Sen. Kelly Ayotte and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. Both have been campaigning with Romney here. The tone of the debate — sponsored by NBC’S
Meet the Press, the New Hampshire Union Leader and Facebook — was strikingly different from the one that had finished just 10 hours earlier, sponsored by ABC, WMUR-TV and Yahoo. On Saturday night in Goffstown, Romney had generally sailed above the fray while Gingrich, Santorum and Texas Rep. Ron Paul sparred with one another.
On Sunday morning, however, the front-runner was under fire from the start. Romney was the more consistent target than in any of the previous 14 nationally televised debates.
Romney, who was declared the narrow winner of last week’s Iowa caucuses, continues to have a wide lead in Granite State surveys, but his standing has drifted down, to 35% Sunday in a daily tracking poll sponsored by the Suffolk University Political Research Center. Paul was second at 20%, and former Utah governor Jon Huntsman, who has based his campaign in New Hampshire, was third at 11%.
After a disappointing showing in Iowa, Texas Gov. Rick Perry has moved his campaign on to South Carolina, which holds the following primary on Jan. 21.
Gingrich and Romney clashed with some heat over the millions of dollars in negative TV ads being aired by independent “super PACS” supporting each of them. The pro-romney Restore Our Future is running ads blasting Gingrich, and a pro-gingrich group is airing a ferocious half-hour movie criticizing the impact on workers at a firm taken over by Romney’s Bain Capital.
“You know some of the ads aren’t true,” Gingrich said to Romney.
Romney first said he hadn’t seen the ads but then defended the particulars in one of them.
“Let me tell you this, the ad I saw said that you were forced out of the speakership; that was correct. It said that you sat down with (House Democratic leader) Nancy Pelosi and argued for a climate change bill; that was correct.” Anything inaccurate should be removed from the ad, he said, but added, “This ain’t the beanbag.”
Perry derided the entire rest of the field as “insiders” who had contributed to problems such as the nation’s debt. “There’s a bunch of people standing up here saying they are conservatives, but their record doesn’t back that up,” he said.
In one heated skirmish, Paul was asked by moderator David Gregory of NBC why only one of the 620 bills he had introduced in Congress actually became law. The Texas congressman said the statistic showed just how “out of the touch” Washington was with the American people.
Santorum pounced, saying some of Paul’s domestic proposals were unachievable and some of his foreign policies unacceptable. “The problem . . . is, all the things that Republicans like about him he can’t accomplish, all the things they’re worried about, he’ll do on Day One.”
The first time he was called on to speak in Sunday’s debate, Huntsman sought to revisit an issue that had been raised Saturday night: his decision to agree to serve in the Obama administration as ambassador to China.
“I was criticized last night by Gov. Romney for putting my country first,” Huntsman said. “Yes, under a Democrat — like my two sons are doing in the United States Navy. They’re not asking what political affiliation the president is.”