Mitt Romney’s rivals for the Republican presidential nomination yesterday slammed his “pious baloney” on the campaign trail and tarred him as a timid moderate sure to lose to Barack Obama.
Squaring off in their second televised debate in just 10 hours, the other contenders seemed determined to seize what could be a final chance to dull Mr Romney’s momentum days before New Hampshire’s bellwether primary today.
Former House speaker Newt Gingrich accused the former Massachusetts governor of being a “moderate” with “an economic plan so timid it resembles Barack Obama’s” and warned Republicans against thinking Romney is the most electable candidate.
“I do think the bigger the contrast, the bolder ideas, the clearer the choice, the harder it is for that billion-dollar campaign to smear his way back into office” in the November 6 elections, said Mr Gingrich.
“I’m very proud of the conservative record I have,” replied Romney, who is seen as the likely nominee if he can make good on his vast lead in opinion polls here and in South Carolina after eking out a win in the Iowa caucuses last week.
In a shot at Mr Gingrich and former senator Rick Santorum, a devout Christian conservative, Mr Romney said “someone who isn’t a lifelong politician” would have a better shot at beating Mr Obama and underlined “we’ve got to nominate a leader.”
Mr Santorum pointed to Mr Romney’s decision not to run for re-election as governor in the face of poor poll numbers and thundered: “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.”
“Politics is not a career. For me, my career was being in business,” said Mr Romney, who made millions as a venture capitalist and mounted a failed bid for the party’s nomination in 2008.
“Can we drop a bit of the pious baloney?” Mr Gingrich scolded in an exasperated tone. “You were running for president while you were governor... you’ve been running consistently for years and years and years.”
While the attacks amounted to a sharp escalation in tone against Mr Romney, he gave as good as he got and committed no major error.