Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum took their best shots at Mitt Romney on Sunday in the final GOP presidential debate before Tuesday’s New Hampshire primary – making the argument that Romney would be no match for President Obama in the fall campaign and that the former Massachusetts governor lacks the conservative credentials to ignite the GOP base.
“Look,” Gingrich said at the opening of the debate on NBC’s Meet the Press. “I think what Republicans have to ask is who's most likely in the long run to survive against the kind of billion dollar campaign the Obama team is going to run. And I think that a bold Reagan conservative with a very strong economic plan is a lot more likely to succeed in that campaign than a relatively timid Massachusetts moderate who even The Wall Street Journal said had an economy plan so timid it resembled Obama.”
Santorum said he was much better suited than Romney to take on Obama and invoke the economic and social principles of the Reagan era that will galvanize the party. “We want someone when the time gets tough-- and it will in this election – we want someone who's going to stand up and fight for the conservative principles, not bail out and not run and not run to the left of Ted Kennedy,” Santorum said.
They may have done some damage with their hard-hitting assaults, especially when Gingrich snapped, “Can we drop a little bit of the pious baloney?” after Romney once again portrayed himself as a career businessman with a disdain for lifelong politicians. “The fact is, you ran in ’94 and lost. That’s why you weren’t serving in the Senate,” Gingrich said. “You had a very bad reelection rating [as governor]. You dropped out of office. . . . You were running for president while you were governor.”
Yet, from just about every sign, Romney is on track to win the New Hampshire primary convincingly, with a double-digit margin of victory over his most aggressive rivals that will give him a major lift heading into the decisive South Carolina and Florida contests. And, if the former Massachusetts governor somehow makes it all the way to the White House, he may want to consider finding a cabinet post for Rep. Ron Paul of Texas, who inadvertently has done more than most to help pave the way for Romney’s nomination.
By now, of course, it is a truism of the 2012 presidential campaign that Romney is destined to be the GOP presidential nominee despite widespread dissatisfaction with him among conservative activists and firebrands. By dint of his superior organization and game plan, huge fundraising advantages and enormous staying power, the former governor and CEO repeatedly weathered serious challenges by far more conservative politicians. He deflected slings and arrows beginning with Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota and Gov. Rick Perry of Texas and continuing through former pizza king Herman Cain, Gingrich and now Santorum.
Paul, 76, the cranky libertarian who opposes most government spending and foreign aid and wants to dismantle the Federal Reserve, has gradually risen in the polls, although few outside of his most die-hard supporters thinks he is electable. Paul has a solid ground organization, raises a lot of money, and is adored by many college students and young voters. Except for his characterization as an “odd-ball uncle” whose isolationist views and soft stand on Iran’s nuclear threat put him far outside Republican orthodoxy, Paul might be a real threat to Romney.
Santorum lashed out at Paul on Sunday, saying that his success on the campaign trail stems from an economic proposal “that he’s never been able to accomplish” and a pledge to bring home the troops from Iraq and other foreign posts the moment he arrives at the White House. “The problem with Congressman Paul is, all the things that Republicans like about him he can’t accomplish and all the things they’re worried about, he’ll do Day One,” Santorum said.
Still, Paul has functioned as the perfect accidental ally to Romney, repeatedly helping to undercut the latest surging threat to Romney as he climbs in popularity.
In the span of little more than a week, Paul has done three things that probably all but sealed Romney’s victory, which is likely to come no later than the Florida primary early next month:
- Paul undercut Santorum, the former Pennsylvania senator and darling of the Christian right, just enough in Iowa to enable Romney to claim a first-place finish in the Republican caucuses – albeit by only eight votes. Paul’s solid third-place finish last week drained Santorum of conservative support that would have easily put him over the top and enabled him to storm out of Iowa with legitimate front-runner status. The Texas congressman also took votes away from Gingrich, who was already beaten down by millions of dollars worth of negative advertising heaped on him in Iowa by a Romney Super PAC. Jokes aside about “Landslide Romney,” the former governor was able to say with a straight face that he had won in a heavily conservative state where until recently he never expected to do well.
- Paul also has helped prevent conservatives from coalescing around one major challenger in New Hampshire who could weaken Romney’s standing in a state where he has run far ahead of his rivals in the polls for months. It has been an article of faith that Romney would run well in the Granite State, because of its more moderate, independent-minded political makeup and close proximity to Romney’s adopted home of Massachusetts.
A Suffolk University/Channel 7 News poll just out shows that Romney is beginning to lose altitude – possibly because he has tried to sit on his lead. But, Gingrich and Santorum are falling far behind, raising the prospects of them limping out of New Hampshire Tuesday night, en route to South Carolina. The poll shows that Romney has dropped from 43 percent of likely GOP primary voters last week to 35 percent, while Gingrich is attracting only nine percent, Santorum eight percent and Perry a paltry one percent. Former governor and ambassador to China Jon Huntsman, who has staked everything on a strong showing in New Hampshire, weighed in with a respectable 11 percent in the poll. But Paul, with 20 percent, is most likely to finish second to Romney if the poll is accurate. - Over the weekend, Paul operated like a one-man wrecking crew. He went after Santorum and Gingrich, a spectacle that enabled Romney to stand back, smiling and above the fray.
The Republican debate Saturday night at St. Anselm College in Manchester, N.H., was the scene of the carnage. Santorum and Gingrich had hoped to throw Romney off stride with tough attacks against his middle-of-the road policies, his Gordon Gekko-like practices while a top executive at Bain Capital, and his flip-flopping on key economic and social issues. Instead, Paul kept them on the defensive for part of the of the evening with one zinger after another.
For example, Paul blasted Santorum as a “big-government, big spending” former member of Congress who showered Pennsylvania with millions of dollars in earmarked federal spending and voted to raise the debt ceiling five times while in office. “He preached to the fact that he wanted a balanced budget amendment, but voted to raise the debt five times,” Paul said. “So he is a big-government person.”
As for Gingrich, Paul stood by his recent campaign assertion that Gingrich was a “chicken hawk” for taking a deferment instead of serving in the military during the Vietnam War while the former Speaker called for military action today and criticized the Obama administration’s decision to cut back on the Pentagon budget. A seething Gingrich, whose father served in the military, responded that: “Dr. Paul has a long history of saying things that are inaccurate and false. . . .The fact is, I never asked for a deferment. I was married with a child. It was never a question.”
To which Paul coolly responded: “When I was drafted, I was married and had two kids, and I went.” Paul was an active duty flight surgeon from 1963 to 65 and was in the Air National Guard from 1965 to 68. Come to think of it, he might make the ideal choice for Secretary of Veterans Affairs in a Romney administration.
