ORLANDO, FLA. — Republican front-runners Rudolph Giuliani and Mitt Romney defended their conservative credentials in the face of pointed attacks from their rivals Sunday night in the most aggressive debate to date in the race for the White House.
“You’ve just spent the last year trying to fool people about your record. I don’t want you to start fooling them about mine,” Arizona Sen. John McCain bluntly told Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts.
“Look at my record, and listen to my vision,” McCain told reporters earlier while campaigning in Kissimmee. “I am far more conservative than any of the leading candidates, and I am, according to recent polls, the one conservative who could beat Sen. (Hillary Rodham) Clinton.”
Former Sen. Fred Thompson made Giuliani his target, saying the former New York City mayor supported federal funding for abortion, gun control and havens for illegal immigrants.
“He sides with Hillary Clinton on each of those issues,” added Thompson, referring to the leader in polls for the Democratic nomination.
The clashes, in the early moments of a 90-minute debate, prompted former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee to say he wanted no part of a “demolition derby. … What I’m interested in is fighting for the American people.”
Whatever their disagreements among one another, the eight rivals agreed on one issue. They took turns criticizing Clinton.
Asked whether she was fit to be commander in chief, Romney replied, “I’d vote no.”
Giuliani said he agreed with one thing the former first lady said recently.
“‘I have a million ideas. America cannot afford them all,”‘ he quoted her as saying, as laughter filled the debate hall. “I’m not making it up.”
McCain said Clinton had recently tried to spend $1 million on a Woodstock Museum, commemorating perhaps the most famous counterculture event of the 1960s.
“Now, my friends, I wasn’t there. I’m sure it was a cultural and pharmaceutical event,” he said.
“I was tied up at the time,” he deadpanned, and the audience rose to applaud the reference to the years McCain spent as a prisoner of war during the Vietnam War.
Biden says Bush could attack Iran
Democratic Sen. Joe Biden said President Bush could use a measure calling the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps a terrorist group as a justification for war.
The Senate voted 76-22 on Sept. 26 to ask that the group be included on a list of terrorist organizations.
Biden said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week With George Stephanopoulos” that the vote was “a gigantic mistake”: “The president’s going to stand there and say, if he does, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, as the United States Congress voted, they said these guys are terrorists. I moved against them to save American lives.”‘
Clinton ready for health-care fight LAS VEGAS — Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton said Sunday she’s ready to “return to the lion’s den” to fight for reforms she wanted as first lady.
“I’ve been down this road; I know it won’t be easy,” she told about 600 people at a community center. “But I think the time has come.”
The New York senator laid out her plans to open the health-care coverage of federal employees and members of Congress to the public while capping premiums and making coverage plans portable across states and jobs.
Denver Post wire services
