CONCORD, N.H., Jan. 8 (UPI) -- Newt Gingrich told front-runner Mitt Romney to drop "the pious baloney" about his campaign at the second Republican presidential debate of the weekend Sunday.
The debate was sponsored by NBC News in Concord, N.H., less than a day after a debate in Manchester, N.H., prior to the state's Tuesday primary, the first in the nation.
Romney, the front-runner in the polls in the New Hampshire race, also took hits from other rivals.
After some Romney bragging about his record as governor of next-door Massachusetts, former U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., said: "Well, if his record was so great as governor ... why didn't he run for re-election? I mean, if you didn't want to even stand before the people of Massachusetts and run on your record, if it was that great ... why did you bail out?"
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As governor, Romney "ran from Ronald Reagan," Santorum argued. "And he said he was going to be to the left of Ted Kennedy on gay rights, on abortion, a whole host of other issues."
Asked whether Romney was electable, former U.S. House Speaker Gingrich said, "President Obama is going to have a very hard re-election effort. But 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."
Reminded that his flyer in New Hampshire says clearly, "Romney is not electable," Gingrich responded, "I think he will have a very hard time getting ... elected."
For his part, Romney said, "I'm very proud of the record that I have [in Massachusetts], and I think the one thing you can't fool the people about New Hampshire about is the record of a governor next door. And people have watched me over my term as governor and saw that I was a solid conservative and that I brought important change to Massachusetts.
"They recognized that I cut taxes 19 times, balanced the budget every one of the four years I was governor, put in place a $2 billion rainy day fund by the time I'd gone," he said. " ... By the way, we created more jobs in Massachusetts than Barack Obama's created in the entire country."
U.S. Rep. Ron Paul tried to turn the debate to "character."
"You know," he said, "I think this whole discussion so far has been very superficial. And I think the question in the way that you ask it is superficial and you're talking about character, which is very important. But I feel we should deal with the issues as well. And I don't see how we can do well against Obama if we have any candidate that, you know, endorsed, you know, single payer systems and ... bailouts and don't challenge the Federal Reserve's $15 trillion of injection bailing out their friends.
"I don't see how we can have anybody really compete with Obama who doesn't challenge this huge empire we have overseas and the overseas spending," he added.
