US News

Romney goes after Gingrich on immigration, wealth, moon

By Pat Reber Jan 27, 2012, 4:38 GMT

Candidates Rick Santorum (L), Newt Gingrich (2-L), Mitt Romney (2-R) and Ron Paul (R) participate in the CNN Florida Republican Presidential Debate at the University of North Florida in Jacksonville, Florida, USA, 26 January 2012. The Florida Republican presidential primary is 31 January 2012. EPA/BRIAN BLANCO

Washington - The two top rivals for the Republican presidential nomination went after each other Thursday night on personal wealth, immigration, foreign policy and, yes, the moon.

But the winner appeared to be Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts who was fighting to regain his top dog position ahead of the Florida primary on Tuesday.

Newt Gingrich, the former speaker of the US House of Representatives, has been breathing down Romney's neck, snatching South Carolina from Romney with a 40-per-cent win last week.

And while the feisty Gingrich's combative debate performances have been credited with that win, his lead over Romney has been whittled down to 1 per cent in the poll averages ahead of the Florida vote. The winner of the 50-state contest will face US President Barack Obama on November 6.

Romney punched hard Thursday night in the televised debate at the University of North Florida in Jacksonville, Florida, demanding that Gingrich apologize for characterizing him as 'anti-immigrant' and turning back Gingrich's attack on his investments.

The immigration issue is important in Florida, which is a heavily Hispanic state. In addition, many of the country's 11 million illegal immigrants are from Latin America.

Gingrich has charged in recent days that Romney wants to deport grandmothers and grandfathers who have been in the US illegally much of their lives.

But Romney retorted, to cheers from the audience: 'Our problem is not 11 million grandmothers. Our problem is 11 million people getting jobs that many Americans, legal immigrants would like to have.'

'I'm not anti-immigrant. My father was born in Mexico and my wife's father was born in Wales,' Romney said.

Romney also sailed into Gingrich for trying to paint him as somehow corrupt for being so wealthy. Romney, who spent much of his life as an investor and businessman, earlier this week released his tax returns which show he earned 42.6 million dollars from his investments in 2010 and 2011.

'We're not going to beat Barack Obama with someone who owns Swiss bank accounts, Cayman Island accounts,' Gingrich said at a campaign event earlier this week. 'I am running for president to represent you, not to represent the Washington establishment, not to represent Goldman Sachs.'

Pressed to repeat his charges by the CNN moderator, Gingrich demurred, saying it didn't belong on the debate platform.

Romney, however, took the issue and ran with it, insisting he had reported all his income to the US government and paid taxes on it, and that his investments were managed by a blind trust.

'Look, I think it's important for people to make sure that we don't castigate individuals who've been successful, and try and by innuendo suggest there's something wrong with being successful and having investments and having a return on those investments,' Romney said. 'I have earned the money that I have. I didn't inherit it.'

The Florida prize looms large on the horizon, offering 50 delegate votes to the Republican convention in August. Of the 1,144 delegates needed to win, Gingrich has 23 from his South Carolina win, and Romney has 19 from his win in New Hampshire and strong performance in Iowa.

Texas Congressman Ron Paul, who has 3 delegates, and former senator Rick Santorum, who has 13 delegates, also spoke in the debate, which started on a lighter note, with a discussion about whether the US government should build a colony on the moon - a promise Gingrich made earlier this week to Florida's hard-pressed space community now that NASA's shuttle programme has shut down.

Gingrich pledged the colony would be built by the end of his second term as president, and promised that once 13,000 Americans are living there, they could petition to become a state.

Romney dismissed the idea as outlandish.

'I think the cost of that would be in the hundreds of billions, if not trillions,' he said. 'I'd rather be rebuilding housing here in the US.'

Romney noted that Gingrich has made unrealistic promises to gain votes along the way - in South Carolina, it was a new interstate highway and dredging the port of Charleston, Romney noted. In New Hampshire, it was a power line project and a new hospital.

'This idea of going state to state and promising what people want to hear, promising billions, hundreds of billions of dollars to make people happy, that's what got us into the trouble we're in now,' Romney said.

Gingrich retorted that he envisioned a system of 'prizes' that would spur on private industry to carry 90 per cent of the costs of building his colony on the moon, with six to seven launches a day to the moon.

'I do not want to be the country that, having gotten to the moon first, turned around and said, 'It doesn't really matter; let the Chinese dominate space; what do we care?''