Republican presidential candidates Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney have been exchanging verbal attacks on each other’s political and private sector careers from afar in recent weeks, but on Sunday they exchanged blows face to face during Sunday’s Republican presidential debate.
The surging Rick Santorum joined in the attack on Mr. Romney, as he also called into question the record of job creation under Mr. Romney.
Mr. Gingrich called for the former Massachusetts governor to stop the “pious baloney” that he calls his campaign rhetoric. The former House speaker believes Mr. Romney has been falsely claiming to be a career businessman, when in fact he has actually been running for various offices over the last 20 years.
“Meet The Press” host David Gregory opened the debate by immediately engaging Mr. Gingrich about the criticism he’s thrown at Mr. Romney in recent weeks regarding Mr. Romney being a “Massachusetts moderate.”
The former House speaker took full advantage.
“Can we drop a little bit of the pious baloney? The fact is you ran in ’94 and lost. That’s why you weren’t serving in the Senate with– Rick Santorum,” said Mr. Gingrich, responding to Mr. Romney’s claim that he had only entered politics because of the “importance of citizenship.”
“The fact is you had a very bad reelection rating. You dropped out of office. You had been out of state for something like 200 days preparing to run for president. You didn’t have this interlude of citizenship while you thought about what to do. You were running for president while you were governor,” said Mr. Gingrich. “You then promptly reentered politics. You happened to lose to McCain as you had lost to Kennedy. Now you’re back running. You’ve been running consistently for years and years and years. So this idea that suddenly citizenship showed up in your mind, just level with the American people.”
The former House speaker’s comments were met with energetic applause from the crowd. Mr. Gingrich it seemed, had finally the moment that he’s been longing for, a true attack on Mr. Romney’s credibility to become the next president of the United States.
Mr. Santorum also used the debate as an opportunity to indict Mr. Romney’s record in politics. The former Pennsylvania senator focused on Mr. Romney’s choice not to run for a second term as governor of Massachusetts. He believes that is an indication that he didn’t perform well during his term.
“If his record was so great as Governor of Massachusetts why didn’t he run for reelection? I mean if you didn’t wanna even stand before the people of Massachusetts and run on your record. If it was that great, why didn’t you– why did you bail out?” said Mr. Santorum. “ If it was that important to the people of Massachusetts that you were gonna go and fight for them, at least you can stand up and– and make the battle that you did a good job.”
Mr. Romney’s main defense was to fight back and say that he is a career businessman and not a career politician. He also gave a clear insight into his basic ideology for anyone running for office, by describing the advice that his father once gave him about politics.
“He said, ‘Mitt, never get involved in politics if you have to win an election to pay a mortgage. If you find yourself in a position when you can serve, why, you oughta have a responsibility to do so if you think you can make a difference.’”
The MSNBC poll of likely New Hampshire primary voters released Friday shows Mr. Romney still holding a substantial lead over the rest of the candidates with 42 percent. Mr. Santorum finished the poll in third place at 11 percent, greatly trailing Mr. Romney and Texas congressman Ron Paul who finished with 22 percent.
Mr. Gingrich finished that poll tied with former Utah governor Jon Huntsman at 9 percent.
The ganging up of Mr. Gingrich and Mr. Santorum against Mr. Romney in exposing his numerous failed attempts in past elections may not be enough to change the minds of New Hampshire voters before Tuesday, but it could give undecided voters in South Carolina a reason to reconsider Mr. Gingrich, who seemed likely to win the Republican nomination just two months ago.
