Romney Under Fire Over Attack Ads

The front-runners in the Republican race last night squabbled repeatedly over immigration, negative campaigning and other issues in a confrontational televised debate only days before the New Hampshire primary.

The bickering reflected not just the tightness and uncertainty of the Republican race but anger on the part of John McCain and Rudy Giuliani on being on the receiving end of millions spent by rival Mitt Romney on attack ads.

McCain, Giuliani and Mike Huckabee, who beat Romney in Iowa last week, had a series of pointed exchanges with Romney.

The three have a vested interest in knocking the multi-millionaire Romney out of the race. The contest could then boil down to McCain versus Huckabee in the South Carolina primary, with the winner facing Giuliani in a battle for the bigger states such as Florida, California and New York.

McCain, who is now favorite to win New Hampshire, was portrayed in the Romney ads as soft on illegal immigration, an emotive issue for Republicans. Romney suggested in the ads that his rivals supported an amnesty for illegal immigrants.

During the debate, McCain snapped at him: "You can spend your whole fortune on these attacks ads, my friend, but it's not true."
Romney replied: "I don't describe your plan as amnesty in my ad. I don't call it amnesty."

A CNN poll published yesterday put McCain on 33% in New Hampshire, Romney 27%, Giuliani 14%, Huckabee 11% and Ron Paul 9%. Duncan Hunter, who was not invited to take part in the debate because of his low poll figures, had 1%.

Romney's campaign team complained after the debate that the others had ganged up on him. Babe Buchanan, speaking on behalf of Romney, said the concerted attacks showed the ads were working and insisted that the ads were only stating what was on the public record. "McCain is the King of Amnesty in Washington. He is running from his record tonight," she said.

McCain several times questioned an apparent lack of consistency in policy on the part of Romney, who adopted relatively liberal positions for a Republican on abortion and other social issues when he successfully ran for governor of Massachusetts but in the presidential race has shifted to a more conservative position.

With a smirk, McCain told Romney: "We disagree on lots of issues but agree you are the candidate of change."

Romney, in spite of running the most negative campaign, retorted: "The continuous personal barbs are interesting but unnecessary."
In another aside, McCain said to Romney, who had complained of being misquoted: "If you change positions from time to time, you will get misquoted."

Giuliani also expressed his unhappiness about the attack ads. He referred to an amnesty introduced by president Ronald Reagan, one of the most popular presidents among Republicans. Giuliani said: "Ronald Reagan did amnesty. I think he would be in one of Mitt's negative commercials. He is the hero of our party."

Apart from immigration, the debate was covered Iraq, health care, oil prices and Barack Obama.

The first pointed exchange was between Romney and Huckabee, the outsider who produced the surprise defeat in Iowa. Romney criticized him for an article portraying President George Bush as having a bunker mentality in his approach to foreign policy and for saying he had not sent enough troops to Iraq.

Huckabee also raised questions about Romney's consistency on policy. When Romney said 'Don't try and characterize my position', Huckabee shot back: "Which one?"