Rivals Giuliani, Romney make it a 1-on-1 fight

Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani are increasingly treating the campaign for the Republican nomination as a two-man race, ignoring their rivals as they assail each other over taxes, spending, and national security.

Yesterday, they opened a new front in a battle growing testier by the day, questioning each other's capacity to be commander in chief.

The former New York mayor ridiculed Romney for saying during a debate Tuesday that he would consult with lawyers before deciding whether he would need congressional approval to take military action against Iran over its suspected nuclear weapons program.

Giuliani's campaign called it a "lawyer's test" for national security, and sought to saddle Romney with a comparison to a former presidential candidate from Massachusetts, Democrat John F. Kerry, who was roasted for saying during a 2004 debate that America must pass a "global test" before taking military ac tion.

Romney's campaign responded by saying Giuliani gave the "most muddled and puzzling answer" to the question of whether a president needs the blessing of Congress when Giuliani said during the debate, "it really depends on exigency of the circumstances and how legitimate it is."

Nine candidates are vying for the Republican nomination. But the sparring yesterday showed that Romney and Giuliani are almost exclusively targeting each other.

They are trying to create "some inevitability, a narrative about who's going to be in the finals," said Stuart Rothenberg, editor and publisher of The Rothenberg Political Report, a nonpartisan political newsletter.

"They each see the other guy as their major contender," he said. "Even though they can't be guaranteed it's going to be a two-man race, they figure if they begin to build some negatives on their opponent, it's never too early to do that."

Other Republican contenders, however, are not ceding the contest to them and are hoping that Romney and Giuliani will damage each other's campaign.

"We're more than happy to let them continue their partisan bickering," Todd Harris, a spokesman for former senator Fred Thompson of Tennessee, said yesterday. "We'll take our message right to the people."

National polls indicate that Giuliani is ahead and Romney is far back in fourth place, behind Senator John McCain of Arizona and Thompson. And a new poll released yesterday suggested that among the Republicans, Giuliani would fare best against Democrat Hillary Clinton in the crucial swing states of Florida, Ohio, and Pennsylvania.

But in Iowa and New Hampshire, where the first nomination ballots are cast, Romney leads in recent polls, trailed closely by Giuliani.

Romney and Giuliani, who both entered the race as moderate Republicans from Democratic bastions in the Northeast, were not always adversarial. During Romney's successful run for governor in 2002, Giuliani campaigned by Romney's side in Boston's North End and had nothing but praise for the would-be governor.

"He is really an exceptional, exceptional leader and someone we want in politics in Massachusetts and in this country," Giuliani said at the time. "This is a man with real leadership qualities, and that's what we need in government right now. We don't need just other politicians."

There has been no room for backslapping lately.

Starting last week and continuing with sharper barbs in Tuesday's debate, the two campaigns have waged a war of words over who cut taxes and spending more - and who would be more fiscally conservative in the White House.

The new focus of contention is foreign policy, an arena where both Romney and Giuliani are trying to polish their credentials because they have less international experience than other candidates, especially McCain.

Answering a question during Tuesday's debate about whether the president would need authorization from Congress to attack Iran, Romney said: "You sit down with your attorneys and they tell you what you have to do, but obviously the president of the United States has to do what's in the best interest of the United States to protect us against a potential threat. The president did that as he was planning on moving into Iraq, and received the authorization of Congress."

Then, pressed to say whether President Bush needed the 2002 congressional vote granting him authority to strike Iraq, Romney said: "You know, we're going to let the lawyers sort out what he needed to do and what he didn't need to do. But, certainly, what you want to do is to have the agreement of all the people - leadership of our government as well as our friends around the world where those circumstances are available."

Yesterday, Giuliani, speaking to the Fox News editorial board, said Romney's response showed that he doesn't understand the authority of the president. "I can't imagine John F. Kennedy during the Cuban missile crisis . . . saying 'I will check with lawyers,' " Giuliani said.

In response, Romney said Giuliani was raising "a phony issue." "I made it very clear . . . I'd make a decision based on the safety of the American people," Romney told reporters as he campaigned in Michigan, according to the Associated Press.

Romney's campaign also pointed out that Romney has said the president has the authority to defend the country and has made clear that he believes Iran cannot be allowed to obtain nuclear weapons.

Still, Giuliani's camp likened Romney's answer to what Kerry said in 2004: "No president, through all of American history, has ever ceded, and nor would I, the right to [preemptively attack] in any way necessary to protect the United States of America. But if and when you do it . . . you have to do it in a way that passes the test, that passes the global test where your countrymen, your people understand fully why you're doing what you're doing and you can prove to the world that you did it for legitimate reasons."

David Wade, a Kerry spokesman, released a statement yesterday saying, "Being lectured by Rudy and Mitt on national security is like being given tips on winning playoff baseball by the Yankees."

Michael Levenson can be reached at mlevenson@globe.com.