Hopefuls Clash in Debate as 1st Southern Primary Nears

The candidates used the national forum to repeat their latest campaign slogans. Romney said he is the candidate of "change" who will take government apart and "put it back together, simpler, smaller, smarter." McCain vowed to cut wasteful spending and bragged about having pushed President Bush to adopt the troop build-up strategy in Iraq. Huckabee touted his work as a governor in improving education and building roads.

Thompson, who has staked his candidacy on a victory in South Carolina, was particularly aggressive, going after Huckabee on taxes by suggesting that he signed a no-tax pledge only after it was politically advantageous.

The Fox panel repeatedly offered tough questions, asking Huckabee whether he endorses a religious pronouncement about wives being submissive to their husbands. The Southern Baptist minister, after noting the irony of being consistently told that religion should be off-limits in the campaigns and then bombarded with questions about the topic by reporters, gave a mini-sermon about the need for husbands and wives to show submission to each other.

On immigration, McCain and Romney agreed that people in the United States must be treated in a "humane" way, but Romney said to applause from the audience that those here illegally must "go home."

Michigan and South Carolina have emerged as critical battlegrounds in a Republican race that found no clear front-runner last week in the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary. Rather, the first two contests further scrambled a presidential nominating contest that has been difficult to handicap from the beginning.

Romney scrapped plans to spend Friday in South Carolina after pulling his television commercials off the air in the state. His campaign hurriedly assembled a more vigorous schedule in Michigan, where Romney's father served as governor and he hopes to make a stand against McCain.

Both men plan to wage an intensive battle in Michigan over the next four days in bids to erase doubts about their candidacies. McCain needs to demonstrate that his appeal can grow beyond New Hampshire, and Romney is desperate for a clear victory after placing second in the first two marquee contests.

Huckabee is making an aggressive push in Michigan and is counting on South Carolina to give his campaign another big boost. He is building a much more robust campaign operation in the state and is continuing to court the evangelical Christians who helped propel him to victory in Iowa.

All three are casting a wary eye toward Florida, where Giuliani is waiting for whomever makes it through the next week's gantlet. The former mayor's campaign began running two new television commercials Thursday and announced a bus tour of the Sunshine State that will begin Sunday.

A Fox News-Opinion Dynamics poll released Thursday showed McCain leading the field in South Carolina, with Huckabee in second place and Romney in third. In Michigan, polls indicated a close race, with Huckabee and Romney leading in some surveys and McCain topping the contest in a poll taken just before his New Hampshire victory.

Huckabee's campaign, after saying last week that it might be too expensive to run in Michigan, is now planning to have him spend the weekend there, starting with a Friday speech on the economy. His campaign also began running an ad called "Understanding," aimed at struggling working-class Americans.

"I believe most Americans want their next president to remind them of the guy who they work with, not the guy who laid them off," Huckabee says in the ad, a not-so-veiled swipe at the businessman Romney.

"We're going full-bore in Michigan. We're trying to give Romney a bronze," said Huckabee campaign chairman Ed Rollins, referring to the former Massachusetts governor's assertion that he has "two silvers" and a "gold," from his second-place finishes in Iowa and New Hampshire and a win in the little-noticed Wyoming caucus.

Staff writer Juliet Eilperin in Washington contributed to this report.