“You cannot get the scale of change we want, and you can’t get the scale of change the tea parties want, by just appointing good people who have no understanding of the fight they’re about to be in,” Gingrich said.
Gingrich was one of six candidates who participated in former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee’s 90-minute candidates’ forum on Fox News. At the insistence of the moderator, there were no clashes between the candidates. They appeared individually on Huckabee’s set in short segments and answered questions from three Republican state attorneys general.
Still, the hopefuls sought to draw distinctions between themselves as the Iowa caucuses are just weeks away and a new poll shows Gingrich pulling away from the field there.
A Des Moines Register poll released Saturday night showed that Gingrich had surged to 25 percent among likely Iowa caucus goers, while former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney had slipped to third place, at 16 percent. The hotly anticipated survey had Rep. Ron Paul (Tex.) in second, with 18 percent.
The questioners — Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli II, Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi and Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt — are leading lawsuits challenging much of President Obama’s agenda, including the health-care overhaul and environmental regulations.
Romney avoided a direct contrast with Gingrich or any other candidate, instead highlighting his private-sector experience and differentiating his health-care law in Massachusetts with the federal overhaul. Romney said he would loosen environmental regulations that he said were stunting economic growth. The Environmental Protection Agency, Romney said, “is a tool in the hands of the president to crush the private enterprise system.”
The other candidates tried to find ways to appeal to the panel to establish ideological purity and a strict adherence to the Constitution with the party’s base.
Rep. Michele Bachmann (Minn.) said she was “very proud” of the three attorneys general for suing the EPA. And on the health-care law, she said: “It really is the new social engineering playground of the left, and it has to be stopped. . . . We have one chance to get rid of this bill and it’s in this election cycle.”
Paul cited the Constitution in advocating his libertarian position that violent acts are not the federal government’s prerogative. Asked whether he considered the Sept. 11 attacks to be terrorism, he said he did, but he argued that “more laws” and “federal policemen” are not the answer to fighting terrorism.
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