After mainly pulling their punches in last night’s debate, Republican presidential frontrunner Mitt Romney’s rivals came out swinging before this morning’s debate on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
Newt Gingrich opened by saying Republicans needed to nominate a Reagan conservative and not a “Massachusetts moderate.”
Romney responded that he was proud of his record as governor.
Rick Santorum argued that though he ran for reelection in 2006 and lost, he questioned why Romney didn’t run that year if he had such a great record as governor. He also noted that in 1994, he ran and won as a conservative, but Romney lost running as a liberal Republican, to the left of opponent Ted Kennedy on gay rights and abortion.
Romney said that he didn’t run for reelection because he isn’t a career politician focused on getting reelected over and over again.
But Gingrich shot back that this was “pious baloney,” noting that Romney was running for president instead of running for reelection, and that he would have been in politics since 1994 if he hadn’t lost to Kennedy.
