He pointed to his record in government in helping to create jobs in the 1980s and 1990s. He asserted that he has the experience to lead the country and the courage to speak the truth when others equivocate. He was particularly sharp in rebutting former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, the biggest threat to his hopes of winning the Republican nomination.
(PROFILE: Mitt Romney, the problem solver)
The debate came at a particularly crucial time in the Republican race, with little more than three weeks before the Jan. 3 Iowa caucuses. The attacks by the other five candidates onstage served to underscore the significance of Gingrich’s rise in national and state polls and the limited time his rivals have to slow his march. The attacks echoed some of what voters in Iowa are seeing on their television screens as the ad wars heat up in advance of the caucuses.
Romney took the lead early in going after Gingrich. Pushed to outline his differences with Gingrich, he ticked off a series of issues, from space exploration to child labor. But he said the biggest difference in their qualifications to be president was in the way they’ve led their lives the past quarter-century.
“We don’t need folks who are lifetime Washington people to get this country out of the mess it’s in,” Romney said. “We need people from outside Washington, outside K Street.”
Gingrich counterattacked. “Let’s be candid,” he said. “The only reason you didn’t become a career politician is because you lost to Teddy Kennedy in 1994. . . . You’d have been a 17-year career politician if you’d won.”
Romney faced some attacks of his own, mostly over his health-care plan in Massachusetts. Texas Gov. Rick Perry was especially aggressive on this issue, and at one point appeared to have tweaked Romney so much over a passage in his book that Romney put his hand out and asked Perry to make a $10,000 bet — a sum of money that drew considerable comment on Twitter as the debate continued — over who was correct. Perry declined to take the bet.
But Romney represented only the leading edge of the criticism aimed at Gingrich in the first candidate debate since he rose to the top of the polls. Rep. Ron Paul (Tex.) accused him of taking money from Freddie Mac at a time when Paul said he was trying to expose the housing bubble, and of being inconsistent in his conservatism.
Rep. Michele Bachmann, who was a consistent critic throughout the debate, and former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum then joined in the fray, firing at Gingrich over his record in the House and for supporting an individual mandate in health care.
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