Schwarzenegger Endorses John Mccain

Republican front-runner John McCain snagged his second high-profile endorsement in 24 hours when it emerged during last night's presidential debate that California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger will come out for the Arizona senator.

The news came shortly after former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani announced that he was ending his campaign and would support McCain on the campaign trail.

Schwarzenegger is expected to announce his support for McCain following a joint appearance by the two in Los Angeles later today.

The debate, the final Republican debate before Super Tuesday next week, saw the two leading candidates sparring over the economy, their respective records, the war in Iraq and who could claim to be the most conservative.

The liveliest exchanges came towards the end of the debate when attention turned to Iraq and the allegation by McCain that Romney had expressed support for a timetable for the withdrawal of US troops from Iraq.

Talking across each other as CNN anchor Anderson Cooper tried to intervene, the two candidates gave expression to the tight race that awaits in next week's primaries.

At one point Romney interrupted McCain to chide him with the words: "How is it that you're the expert on what my position is?

"Why do you insist on not using the actual quote? If this was a question it could have been raised in April or May."

McCain responded with an added barb: "I raised the question many times," he said, "of whether you have the experience to lead this country and I will continue to raise it."

Romney's charge that McCain's attacks were "Washington-style old politics" also met a stern rebuttal from McCain, who countered that, "Your negative ads, my friend, have set the tone for this campaign."

Although the exchanges did not become as heated as the sparring between the Democratic nominees in recent weeks, it served to enliven what might otherwise have been an anodyne rehearsal of policy positions.

The tiff between McCain and Romney left the other two candidates on the stage feeling distinctly left out. Huckabee, in particular, expressed his feeling of exclusion, telling moderators, "I didn't come here to umpire a ball game between these two."

When talk turned to the conservative credentials of the candidates, Huckabee pitched in to point out that he could match and possibly better both McCain and Romney.

"This is a two-man race," he said. "There's another guy down here on the far right of the table. You want to talk conservative credentials? If we're going to talk conservatism I'd like to be in on the discussion."

But that discussion too was dominated by the two leading candidates, with Romney accusing McCain of being outside the conservative mainstream.

"He's a good Republican," Romney said of McCain. "I wouldn't question those credentials at all, but there are a number of pieces of legislation where his views are outside of the mainstream ... of conservative Republican thought ... If you get endorsed by the New York Times, you're not a mainstream conservative."

McCain replied that he had also been endorsed by two newspapers in Romney's home town "who know you best".

Unlike most other Republican debates, the words Hillary Clinton were not uttered. Instead, unsurprisingly given the venue, the candidates and their interlocutors mentioned the name of Ronald Reagan with remarkable regularity.

McCain noted several times that he was a "foot soldier of the Reagan revolution", and it took Huckabee to bring the discussion down to earth.

Asked to comment on President Reagan's appointment of abortion rights supporter Sandra day O'Connor to the Supreme Court, Huckabee replied: "I'm not going to come to the Ronald Reagan library and say anything about Ronald Reagan. I'm not that stupid."