Romney Duels With Santorum in Republican Debate

Outside the Mesa Arts Center, people gathered on Wednesday to watch the debate taking place inside. It was the final one on the Republican primary calendar. More Photos »

MESA, Ariz. — Mitt Romney challenged Rick Santorum’s credentials as a fiscal conservative in a fiercely combative debate on Wednesday, trying to redefine Mr. Santorum as part of the problem in Washington and regain his footing in the fight for the Republican presidential nomination.

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With the Arizona and Michigan primaries only six days away, followed quickly by a dozen more contests, Mr. Romney arrived here at a critical moment of his candidacy armed with a detailed indictment of Mr. Santorum’s record in Congress. Mr. Romney sought to dismantle his rival’s claim to be the authentic conservative in the race.

“While I was fighting to save the Olympics, you were fighting to save the ‘Bridge to Nowhere,’ ” Mr. Romney said, drawing upon a noted symbol of government excess to drive home his point against Mr. Santorum, a former Pennsylvania senator.

It was Mr. Santorum’s first time in the cross hairs as a leading candidate, an uncomfortable position that has set back other Republican challengers. He did not recoil or wither under pressure, but he was placed on the defensive again and again, with Mr. Romney and Representative Ron Paul of Texas acting as a tag team in critiquing his record in Congress.

They criticized his earmarks, his vote for a provision that financed Planned Parenthood and his support of the No Child Left Behind law, President George W. Bush’s signature education plan now out of favor with conservatives. By the end of the night, the scrutiny seemed to wear on Mr. Santorum, who was taunted with boos when he said he had voted for the education program even though “it was against the principles I believed in.”

He explained that he had done so because of its importance to Mr. Bush, saying: “Sometimes you take one for the team, for the leader.” That line provided an opening for Mr. Paul, who declared: “He calls this a team sport. He has to go along to get along, and that’s the way the team plays, but that’s what the problem is with Washington.”

The landscape of the Republican presidential campaign — reshuffled yet again since the last time the candidates debated on Jan. 26 — came into sharp view here on stage at the Mesa Arts Center. It was the final scheduled Republican debate on the calendar, but unless a presumptive nominee emerges swiftly, debates could take place throughout the spring as the party’s nominating contest becomes a drawn-out fight for delegates.

If Mr. Romney came across as a persistent prosecutor, jumping in eagerly to make his points, Mr. Santorum was defensive yet did not lose his temper as others have in the hot seat.

From the start, it appeared that Mr. Romney and Mr. Santorum had a shared goal: turning the night, and the race, into a two-man contest. But Newt Gingrich came alive yet again, not as an angry combatant but as what he described as a “cheerful” alternative, enthusiastically challenging the moderator, John King of CNN, and turning questions to his own purposes.

The candidates sat behind a table for only the second time in the long-running series of debates, rather than standing behind lecterns, which at times made them seem like squirmy schoolchildren scrunched into classroom desks.

The economy — the dominant issue to most voters — took a back seat to a host of other topics in the wide-ranging debate, which dwelled on social issues, immigration and the arcane world of Congressional voting records. Mr. Romney played up his status as the only candidate on the stage who had never served in Washington, but Mr. Santorum would not let his rival take credit for balancing the budget as governor of Massachusetts, which is required by state law.

“Don’t go around bragging about something you have to do,” Mr. Santorum said. “Michael Dukakis balanced the budget for 10 years. Does that make him qualified to be president of the United States? I don’t think so.”

Mr. Santorum parried the barbs from Mr. Paul as he has all year, often laughing and shaking his head. But the exchanges between him and Mr. Romney were sharper.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Mr. Santorum told him at one point.

“Wait — wait a second. Wait a second. Wait a second. Wait a second. Wait!” Mr. Romney said, cutting in as Mr. Santorum attacked the Massachusetts health care plan that Mr. Romney signed into law.

Mr. Romney managed to bring before Republican primary voters an issue that has been a sore subject between Mr. Santorum and conservatives for years: his support in the 2004 Republican primary in Pennsylvania for Senator Arlen Specter over Pat Toomey, his conservative challenger.

Michael Barbaro contributed reporting.

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Bailout Stand Trails Romney in Car Country

Government checks would not solve the car companies’ long-term problems, Mr. Romney wrote in an opinion article that he asked The New York Times to publish. The better path, he suggested, was a court-administered restructuring that would leave the companies with costs more in line with the global competition. The article carried the headline “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt,” which critics continue to use against him.

General Motors and Chrysler did eventually enter bankruptcy, and the headline was written by an editor, not by Mr. Romney. Yet more than three years later, the position he took still leaves many of his allies in the business world befuddled. It has also opened up an awkward distance between Mr. Romney and some top Republicans in his native state who insist that the $80 billion assistance plan completed by the Obama administration, expanding on steps taken by President George W. Bush, was the only viable path to save the carmakers from ruin.

But in that tumultuous moment — just after President Obama’s election but before he took office — Mr. Romney had both personal and political reasons to speak out.

He wrote of the experience of his father, George Romney, who as the head of American Motors had turned that company around, and he drew on his own experience as a private equity manager who had remade companies through bankruptcy. At a time when the bank bailout program that Congress passed six weeks earlier had left many on the right angry and concerned that the response to the financial crisis was undercutting free markets, Mr. Romney’s position was in sync with a desire among conservatives to draw the line against further government intervention.

Whether his opposition to the bailout plays as the kind of principled stand that Tea Party voters find reassuring or as an example of the cold, ruthless brand of capitalism that his opponents charge is responsible for his fortune will help determine how Mr. Romney fares in Michigan’s primary on Feb. 28 and likely beyond.

The Michigan Republican primary electorate is expected to be very conservative, defined at least as much by the kinds of conservatives who recoil at government bailouts and are suspicious of union power as it is by those with a more direct stake in the auto industry’s rebound.

“He gets attacked and mischaracterized for wanting to let Detroit die, and that’s not the case,” said Speaker Jase Bolger of the Michigan House, a Republican who represents a district near Battle Creek on the state’s conservative western side. He said Mr. Romney’s opposition to the auto rescue on principle could do the candidate more good than harm among primary voters.

“Autos are such an important part of Michigan’s heritage, but many people saw this as a government intervention that wasn’t going to cure the problem,” Mr. Bolger added.

The politics of the bailout and the industry’s comeback remain complex and not limited to Detroit. After the Michigan primary, the nominating contest moves into states where the automotive industry also has a significant presence: Alabama, Illinois, Mississippi, Ohio and Tennessee.

Some Republicans have criticized Mr. Romney’s insistence that federal intervention was wrongheaded as an example of what they see as his willingness to say anything to win over skeptical conservatives.

“He’s playing the same song as Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck,” said Bob Lutz, a former vice chairman for General Motors who said he was still so upset with Mr. Romney that he had cast his absentee ballot in Michigan for Rick Santorum.

“I think all of us in the auto industry who knew what the situation was were profoundly disappointed and, I would say, angry,” Mr. Lutz said. “We all saw it for what it was, which was a political ploy to the right.”

The Obama campaign sees a potential advantage and is moving to seize it. An Obama campaign official said allies will be dispatched across Michigan this week to hold news conferences raising Mr. Romney’s opposition to the auto company loans and attacking his economic policies as beneficial to the wealthy at the expense of the middle class.

Mr. Romney has defended his 2008 plan, most prominently in an opinion article last week for The Detroit News, as essentially a blueprint for the path that Detroit ended up taking. “The course I recommended was eventually followed,” he wrote.

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Romney Arizona Co-Chair Resigns Amid Allegation

Mr. Babeu made national headlines for his tough stance on illegal immigration. He endorsed Mr. Romney in October and is running for Congress in Arizona’s Fourth District.

The news of Mr. Babeu’s decision to step down from the Romney campaign was first reported by The Arizona Republic.

On Thursday, The Phoenix New Times reported the allegations of a 34-year-old Mexican man whom it identified only as “Jose.” He said that when he refused to sign an agreement that he would never mention his relationship with Mr. Babeu, which he said lasted for years, the sheriff and his lawyer tried to intimidate him with threats of deportation.

In a press conference on Saturday, Mr. Babeu said that he had had a personal relationship with Jose, but denied that he had threatened to deport him. The accusations, he said, “are absolutely, completely false — except for the issues that refer to me as being gay. Because that’s the truth. I am gay.”

Even though Mr. Babeu was a minor figure in the Romney campaign, the accusations came at a less than ideal time. With Arizona and Michigan holding primaries at the end of the month, Mr. Romney is struggling to shore up social conservatives’ support and to fend off Rick Santorum, who is surging after winning contests in Colorado, Missouri and Minnesota.

“Sheriff Babeu has stepped down from his volunteer position with the campaign so he can focus on the allegations against him,” Andrea Saul, a campaign spokeswoman, said in an e-mail statement. “We support his decision.”

The press conference that Mr. Babeu held on Saturday largely turned into a call to look beyond his sexual orientation.

He defined himself as an American, and appealed for voters and the public to view him through the lens of his military service and time in law enforcement.

“I want to be judged on my service: 20 years in the military, two deployments — including one in Iraq — a police officer who has responded to thousands of calls for help, and a sheriff who has cut response times while reducing my own budget,” he said in a statement.

Jose also told The Phoenix New Times that Mr. Babeu e-mailed explicit photographs of himself to an anonymous man whom he met on a Web site called Adam4Adam.

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Mitt Romney and Ron Paul Friendly Amid the Rivalry

Eric Thayer for The New York TimesRon Paul, center, and Mitt Romney during a break in a Republican presidential debate in Sioux City, Iowa, in December.

LAKE JACKSON, Tex. — Once there was a challenge of a softball game from the Ron Paul clan to the Mitt Romney clan. “They didn’t show up,” Mr. Paul says. “We didn’t schedule it. We really razz them about that, ‘You guys chickened out!’ ”

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When Mr. Paul’s campaign jet broke down last year in Wolfeboro, N.H., Mr. Romney’s wife, Ann, offered to let Mr. Paul, an aide and one of his granddaughters stay the night at their summer home on Lake Winnipesaukee. When Mr. Romney arrived later, he offered his jet to take them home to Texas. Mr. Paul, not wanting to impose, was grateful but declined both offers.

In a Republican presidential contest known for its angry rivalries, the Romney-Paul relationship stands out for its behind-the-scenes civility. It is a friendship that, by Mr. Paul’s telling, Mr. Romney has worked to cultivate. The question is whether it is also one that could pay dividends for Mr. Romney as he faces yet more setbacks in his struggle to capture the 1,144 delegates needed to win the nomination.

Ideological similarities among supporters of Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich suggest that if Mr. Gingrich dropped out, many of his backers would coalesce behind Mr. Santorum. But as Mr. Paul steadily collects delegates, one thing that remains to be seen is whether his affinity — at least on a personal level — for Mr. Romney could help the former Massachusetts governor as the fight drags on.

Mr. Paul, a 76-year-old congressman from Texas, sees his three Republican rivals as more or less the same politically. He can be tough on Mr. Romney, whom he describes as a flip-flopper with a dubious political core.

“He’s been all over the place on some of this stuff,” Mr. Paul said in a recent interview near his Texas home. But he seems to segregate those views from his personal feelings for Mr. Romney, whom he sees as a steady, dignified personality whose devotion to wife and family reflect his own values.

“I talk to Romney more than the rest on a friendly basis,” Mr. Paul said. ”I throw Romney’s name out because he’s made a bigger attempt to do it. The others are sort of just real flat.”

In an interview on CBS this past weekend, Mr. Paul volunteered that since his rivals were largely identical in policy substance, “when it comes down to those three, it’s probably going to be management style more than anything else.” According to one person close to the Paul campaign, it would be accurate to infer from that phrasing — “management style” — that Mr. Paul has a willingness to listen to overtures from Mr. Romney, who has been trying to sell himself to voters as a proven manager.

The relationship between the two men is rooted partly in the fact that they are veterans of the 2008 nominating fight. And that has translated into growing bonds between their families after dozens of debates, primaries and caucuses.

The candidates’ spouses, Ann Romney and Carol Paul, “know each other better than any of the other wives,” Mr. Paul said. He and Mr. Romney talk “all the time” and “we’ve met all their kids.” Once he telephoned Mr. Romney just as Mr. Romney was calling him. “Sometimes I’m never sure who issued a call,” he said.

Mr. Paul has already provided some tactical help: When Mr. Romney began to flounder in South Carolina and was under attack over his career in leveraged buyouts, Mr. Paul came to his defense, suggesting that his critics were anticapitalist. His campaign even issued a press release assailing other rivals for, in Mr. Paul’s view, taking Mr. Romney’s quote about firing people out of context.

What is not clear is how much, and under what circumstances, Mr. Paul might ever provide any more tangible help to Mr. Romney. His aides say publicly that Mr. Paul is committed to winning the nomination. And the two camps are at odds right now over the outcome of last weekend’s Maine caucuses, in which state Republican Party officials declared Mr. Romney the winner by a relatively small margin over Mr. Paul even though some places have yet to cast ballots.

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Romney Bows Out of a Debate, and Others Follow

A debate scheduled for March 1 in Atlanta was canceled after Mitt Romney’s campaign announced that the candidate had no plans to participate in the event being sponsored by CNN and the Georgia Republican Party. Two other candidates, Rick Santorum and Representative Ron Paul, quickly followed suit.

The debates held in the Republican nominating contest have been so frequent and omnipresent that they have become something of a running joke. The campaigns — especially Mr. Romney’s — like to grumble about them, and they have become such a feature of evening television that they have almost come to resemble just another TV reality show, albeit of a different bent. Some have even said that comedic takes on the debates, like those on “Saturday Night Live,” have not lived up to the theater of the actual events.

For viewers suffering separation anxiety, there is still one more Republican debate, which CNN is sponsoring next Wednesday night in Arizona. For Mr. Romney and some other hopefuls, it will be the 21st of the race, seemingly some sort of record. (In fact, in 2008, both the Democrats and Republicans had an equally unending string of debates.)

In an e-mail, the Romney campaign said that Mr. Romney was unable to make the debate because of scheduling demands before the series of primaries and caucuses on March 6, known as Super Tuesday.

“Governor Romney will be spending a lot of time campaigning in Georgia and Ohio ahead of Super Tuesday,” wrote Andrea Saul, a campaign spokeswoman. “With eight other states voting on March 6, we will be campaigning in other parts of the country and unable to schedule the CNN Georgia debate. We have participated in 20 debates, including eight from CNN.”

A spokesman for Mr. Santorum told a reporter for CBS News and The National Journal, which first reported the debate cancellation, that the candidate had “no plans of doing it right now.” Jesse Benton, a national campaign chairman for Mr. Paul, said that he, too, would be bowing out. “We have decided not to participate,” Mr. Benton said in an e-mail.

One candidate did not seem to like the turn of events: Newt Gingrich. Upon being told that Mr. Romney would skip the debate, Mr. Gingrich, campaigning in Los Angeles, said he expected to participate, then offered a reason Mr. Romney would want to avoid confrontation.

“The Romney model is to go to Wall Street and raise huge amounts of money to run negative ads,” Mr. Gingrich said, “and you can understand why having to defend that strategy is probably not something he’s very happy with.”

Mr. Gingrich is perhaps the most debate-happy of the four remaining candidates. When Herman Cain, a pizza magnate, was still in the race, he and Mr. Gingrich sat down for a one-on-one, Lincoln-Douglas-style debate. And Mr. Gingrich, who is known for aggressively confronting the debate moderators to score points with the audience, saw his candidacy resuscitated by his verbal confrontations with Mr. Romney and debate moderators.

He has challenged everyone from President Obama to Mr. Romney to join him in a more freewheeling debate format. (So far, they have declined.)

But CNN, in a statement, said that “without full participation of all four candidates” it would not hold the March 1 debate.

Trip Gabriel contributed reporting from Los Angeles.

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Romney Campaign Distances Itself From Congressman Grimm

Mr. Grimm acted as a surrogate for Mr. Romney during the primary in New Hampshire, and was one of Mr. Romney’s most prominent defenders after he was criticized for saying he likes “being able to fire people who provide services to me.”

But on Thursday, a spokeswoman for Mr. Romney’s national campaign, Andrea Saul, indicated that Mr. Grimm would no longer play such a role in the campaign.

Ms. Saul declined to provide a reason, but the move came on the same day that The New York Times published an article detailing how Mr. Grimm had engaged in questionable business practices involving his real estate and restaurant ventures.

Last month, The Times reported that the lead fund-raiser during Mr. Grimm’s successful 2010 campaign was under investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Some donors said Mr. Grimm and the fund-raiser had made it clear that they would accept illegal donations.

Even as the Romney campaign was turning its back on Mr. Grimm on Thursday, his allies on Staten Island were rallying around him.

Guy Molinari, the former Staten Island congressman who is the state chairman of Mr. Romney’s campaign and Mr. Grimm’s political mentor, insisted that Mr. Grimm would still be a go-to campaigner for Mr. Romney.

“As a matter of fact they consider — and they reiterated this to me yesterday — they consider Michael as the number one person for the Romney camp,” Mr. Molinari said in an interview.

Mr. Molinari said Mr. Grimm, a former Marine and F.B.I. agent, had made energetic appearances for Mr. Romney in at least three states. “They like him a lot,” Mr. Molinari said. “Fortunately, they don’t make their decisions based on reading newspapers.”

But when told of Mr. Molinari’s comments, Ms. Saul, the spokeswoman, contradicted them. “I can’t speak to Mr. Grimm’s personal schedule, but he is not an official surrogate for the campaign,” she said in an e-mail.

That statement comes as a blow to Mr. Grimm. His 2010 campaign drew strength from the Tea Party, but he represents a swing district that includes Staten Island and a portion of western Brooklyn. He has been criticized by some conservatives for taking moderate positions, including his endorsement of Mr. Romney.

Indeed, Mr. Grimm’s supporters would not take no for an answer on Thursday. Told of the Romney spokeswoman’s statement, Mr. Molinari said: “I think she didn’t know what’s happening. They’re some distance removed from the real world.” He said that he was “100 percent” certain the Romney campaign would keep using Mr. Grimm as a surrogate in many states, and that they would be “fools” if they did not.

Mr. Grimm, who declined to speak to The Times about the campaign finance allegations or his business history, told The Staten Island Advance on Thursday that the articles in The Times were politically motivated.

“I’m not going to lie down and take it,” Mr. Grimm said, according to The Advance. “They are picking on the wrong Marine.”

Eric Ulrich, a New York City councilman who heads the Romney campaign in the city, has also declared that Mr. Grimm would continue to play a prominent role in the campaign, calling him “a rising star.”

On Thursday, Mr. Ulrich did not respond to messages seeking comment.

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Romney Defends Stance on Auto Bailout

The campaign’s new focus on Michigan, which will hold its Republican primary on Feb. 28, comes as new national polls, including a New York Times/CBS News survey, show Rick Santorum surging to a tie with Mr. Romney.

Mr. Romney’s new advertisement, called “Growing Up,” shows him driving a car and reminiscing about life in Detroit. He criticizes President Obama and concludes by saying: “I want to make Michigan stronger and better. Michigan’s been my home, and this is personal.”

The commercial is to begin running on Wednesday, according to a Republican who tracks media spending and who said the advertising cost a modest $178,000 on the NBC station in Detroit.

A “super PAC” backing Mr. Romney also began an advertisement in Michigan attacking Mr. Santorum for voting as a senator to raise the debt limit, to increase spending, to request earmarks and to let convicted felons vote. “Rick Santorum. Big Spender. Washington Insider,” proclaims the ad, from Restore Our Future.

Mr. Romney also sought to highlight his connections to Michigan in the opinion article published in The Detroit News on Tuesday, while also deflecting potential criticism about his opposition to federal loans to rescue the auto industry.

Noting that he was born in Detroit and that his father was president of the American Motors car company in the 1950s, Mr. Romney wrote that he was 7 years old when he got his “love of cars and chrome and fins and roaring motors” from his father.

But the main message of the piece was to defend an Op-Ed article Mr. Romney wrote just two weeks after the nation chose Barack Obama as president in 2008. Published in The New York Times, it had the simple headline “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt.”

Mr. Romney’s explanation is a complicated one, especially given the industry’s remarkable turnaround in the last three years.

Mr. Romney says he always favored what he calls a “managed bankruptcy” for the auto companies that would have allowed the businesses to restructure and emerge stronger than before. He criticized Mr. Obama for choosing what he called a “bailout” of the industry that benefited big labor unions.

But Mr. Romney next acknowledges that General Motors and Chrysler did in fact go through a “managed bankruptcy” at the urging of Mr. Obama’s administration — and he takes credit for being the one to have the idea first.

“Managed bankruptcy may sound like a death knell. But in fact, it is a way for a troubled company to restructure itself rapidly, entering and leaving the courtroom sometimes in weeks or months instead of years, and then returning to profitable operation,” Mr. Romney wrote in the piece. “The course I recommended was eventually followed.”

Officials in Mr. Obama’s administration, and many economists in both parties, scoff at Mr. Romney’s suggestion that a managed bankruptcy was possible without the billions of dollars in government aid to the car companies. They say Wall Street and private equity firms in early 2009 were in no position to lend the kind of money that the companies needed to manage the bankruptcy process in an orderly fashion.

They also point out a fact that Mr. Romney neglects to mention in Tuesday’s opinion article: that it was the Bush administration that made the initial loans to General Motors and Chrysler, starting the “bailouts” that Mr. Romney derides.

In a conference call with reporters on Tuesday, Jennifer M. Granholm, a former Democratic governor of Michigan, accused Mr. Romney of “stabbing us in the back” despite being from Michigan.

“I think he should say: ‘I’m sorry. The president was right,’ ” Ms. Granholm said. “Instead, he is justifying what he said, which turned out to be a terribly wrong piece of advice.”

Democrats also accuse Mr. Romney of trying to rewrite the history of his earlier positions.

In the first paragraph of his 2008 opinion article, Mr. Romney made an unmistakable prediction: “If General Motors, Ford and Chrysler get the bailout that their chief executives asked for yesterday, you can kiss the American automotive industry goodbye. It won’t go overnight, but its demise will be virtually guaranteed.”

In fact, General Motors announced last month that it had earned $8 billion in profits in 2011 and had set a target of $10 billion in profits for 2012. Chrysler this month reported a profit of $225 million for the fourth quarter of 2011.

Mr. Romney now argues that the auto industry would be even better off if it had not received government money. And he accuses Mr. Obama of “crony capitalism” because the Chrysler bailout included provisions that gave the United Auto Workers an ownership stake in the company after it emerged from bankruptcy.

Mr. Romney called that an “$85 billion sweetheart deal disguised as a rescue plan” and argued that it was to benefit the unions, which were the president’s political supporters. He wrote that the federal government should “divest itself” of its remaining ownership position in General Motors and should turn the proceeds “over to the nation’s taxpayers.”

In fact, the restructuring of Chrysler during the bankruptcy process did involve agreements with the United Automobile Workers and the administration that led to a much smaller union, plant closings and a two-tier wage system that has helped to trim costs. The company also trimmed health care costs that had long been called an impediment to profitability.

Officials for Mr. Obama’s administration have long argued that such concessions from the unions were possible only because of the leverage the government wielded through the bailout and bankruptcy process.

Bill Vlasic contributed reporting from Detroit, and Jeremy W. Peters from New York.

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