CONCORD, N.H. – Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum lobbed attacks from opposite sides of front-runner Mitt Romney on the Republican presidential debate stage Sunday morning.
Yet ideologically, they both reside in the right corner, battling for conservative anti-Romney votes ahead of Tuesday’s New Hampshire primary.
The tag team offensive -- Gingrich accused Romney of peddling “pious baloney,” while Santorum said the former Massachusetts governor chose to “bail out” on his state rather than seek re-election – came from two candidates with long ties and similar philosophies.
Gingrich and Santorum trumpet accomplishments from the 1990s and have a propensity for bombastic talk. And they have been almost unfailingly gracious to one another in public – even as the race is fast becoming not big enough for both of them.
Suffolk University pollster David Paleologos, who is conducting a daily tracking poll of the New Hampshire primary, said Romney has remained comfortably in front. Gingrich and Santorum are competing for registered Republican non-Romney votes, while Texas Rep. Ron Paul and former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman are splitting non-Romney Independents, who are eligible to vote in Tuesday’s primary.
“Because Gingrich and Santorum don’t have crossover with Independents, they’re stuck,” Paleologos said. “And because Huntsman and Paul don’t have real crossover among Republicans, they’re stuck. And Romney is just kind of sitting there as time’s ticking away.”
The former Georgia congressman was asked Saturday how he planned to draw a contrast with Santorum: “I don’t,” Gingrich replied, and kept to his word through the pair of debates Saturday night and Sunday morning.
Longtime Santorum media strategist John Brabender said the lack of clashes comes from the fact that “their philosophies are probably similar.”
Brabender said of all the candidates, Santorum is most friendly with Gingrich, as the two “worked side by side on a lot of important things in Congress.”
The thing they cite the most is the Welfare Reform Act of 1996. Gingrich led the House when it passed; Santorum guided the bill on the Senate floor. Both speak of it as a watershed moment of bipartisan cooperation to rein in an entitlement program.
Each candidate, separately, cited the law during Sunday’s debate. Gingrich said it is evidence of his ability to rise above his partisan warfare with President Bill Clinton. “And we got a lot of things done,” Gingrich said.
Santorum said it’s an example of sticking to his conservative guns in tough times. “We had hard opposition,” he said. “But I was able to work together and paint a vision. We made compromises, but not on our core principle.”
Their shared histories in Washington also have opened them up for criticism.
Both left office abruptly – Gingrich resigned in 1998 after an intraparty revolt for the speaker’s gavel; Santorum lost re-election in a 2006 rout.
Both live in northern Virginia, not the states they once represented. They are known for biting rhetoric and have drawn controversy for blunt comments. On the trail in New Hampshire last week, Santorum caused a news media flare-up for comparing homosexuality to polygamy. Gingrich did the same by saying he would tell the NAACP to demand paychecks, not food stamps — even though it was a variation on an oft-used stump line.
Just as Gingrich’s post-Congress business ventures, including consulting for government-backed mortgage lender Freddie Mac, became fodder for the media and opponents, Santorum’s high-paid work for United Health Services and Consol Energy was the subject of a front-page New York Times story Friday.
Romney, while not mentioning the duo by name, seemed to reference them during Sunday’s debate in railing against people who “go to Washington for 20 and 30 years who get elected and then when they lose office they stay there and make money as lobbyists or connecting to businesses. I think it stinks.”
Romney’s campaign was more blunt. During Sunday’s debate, the Romney campaign released a memo entitled “Who is Rick Santorum?” focused on his votes favoring labor unions. After endorsing Romney last week, Sen. John McCain, the party’s 2008 presidential nominee, hit the campaign trail criticizing Santorum’s support of earmarks while in the Senate.
Restore Our Future – the pro-Romney Super PAC that has unleashed an unrelenting advertising barrage on Gingrich – is avoiding the Santorum attacks, for now. The group continues to purchase television ad time hitting Gingrich in South Carolina and Florida -- states holding GOP primaries later this month -- a sign that it still considers the former speaker as the biggest threat to consolidate conservatives against Romney.
During Sunday’s debate, Gingrich and Romney got in a heated exchange about Restore Our Future, and the accuracy of its key advertisement targeting Gingrich’s “baggage.” Romney, who by law cannot direct the PAC’s spending, defended some of the ad’s criticisms but added “If there was something related to abortion that it said that was wrong, I hope they pull it out.”
The line he was referring to stated that as Speaker, Gingrich “supported taxpayer funding of some abortions” in reference to Gingrich’s defense of the Hyde Amendment, which bans all taxpayer abortion subsidies except in cases of rape or incest.
Gingrich, whose legal team is trying to get the ad off the air in South Carolina, replied “I’m glad finally, on this stage and weeks later, he’s said, ‘Gee, if they’re wrong, take them down,’” Romney added that some of Gingrich’s criticisms on him were “over the top.” But Gingrich noted that Romney once said the anti-Gingrich ads are just part of rough-and-tumble politics.
“I’m taking his advice,” Gingrich said.
The public acrimony does not extend to Santorum, though advisers for both sides are aiming to draw distinctions between the two men. Gingrich’s allies argue that the former Speaker is a visionary with much more experience, and that he’s a superior debater.
The closest Gingrich himself has come to reflecting this view was when he called Santorum a “junior partner” during his speakership – though he later said he did not mean to belittle Santorum.
Santorum’s allies claim he is the more genuine conservative and say the attacks on issues such as Gingrich’s past support for an individual mandate to purchase health insurance – an idea once touted by the conservative Heritage Foundation that Gingrich now rejects – would be a weakness with tea party voters in the general election.
“As much respect as the senator has for Newt personally, he thinks there are some problems in offering a real contrast with Obama,” Brabender said.
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