GOP candidates debate who's a true conservative
WASHINGTON -- As the Republican presidential candidates prepared to meet for a debate Sunday night in Florida, Mitt Romney sought to defuse a weeklong uproar within the GOP field over his comment that he "represents the Republican wing of the Republican Party," saying that other candidates can be considered real Republicans.
"I'm not the only real Republican," Romney said CBS-TV's "Face the Nation." "John McCain's a real Republican, so is Rudy Giuliani. There are a lot of real Republicans. I'm not the only one, but I'm one, and I believe in the principles of my party and believe that the only way that we're going to take the White House is not by acting like Hillary Clinton.''
Romney was then pressed to say which Republican candidate was acting like the Democratic front-runner. Romney declined to name anyone. "I'm going to let other people figure that out, but that's the wrong way to go," Romney said.
At one point in the interview, however, Romney said that McCain once said he wouldn't try to overturn a Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion but later changed his mind.
"Senator McCain . . . changed his views relating to immigration in certain ways," Romney said. "He's changed his views on Roe v. Wade. He's changed his views -- he's voted against the Bush tax cuts, now he's in favor of them."
Regarding McCain's position on the Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion, Romney said McCain "was in favor of it not being overturned, and now he says he thinks it should be overturned." McCain has said he has had a consistently antiabortion position. McCain, meanwhile, sharpened his attack on Romney, saying on "Fox News Sunday'' that Romney had changed his position on numerous issues. McCain noted that Romney voted for the late Senator Paul Tsongas in the 1992 primaries and once supported abortion rights.
McCain said he was particularly upset by Romney's statement that he represented the Republican wing of the Republican Party in light of Romney's conversion to a more conservative position on several issues.
"We can all claim to be 'Republicans,' but when you took liberal positions on the issues in Massachusetts, as perhaps he had to in order to get elected, all of the things that he did . . . then I have to take exception to it," McCain said.
McCain said Romney had said he didn't want to go back to the Reagan-Bush years; supported Tsongas, a Democrat, for president; and contributed to a Democrat running for office in New Hampshire.
Romney, asked about several of those charges in his talk-show appearance, acknowledged voting for Tsongas in the primary but said he voted for George H. W. Bush in the 1992 general election. He said his comment in a 1994 Senate debate about not wanting to go back to the Reagan-Bush years was made because he was trying to explain to voters that he had his own agenda.
Romney said he hasn't decided whether to deliver a speech about his Mormon faith. But he outlined what likely would be the theme of such a speech, saying he hoped "people will make their decision not based on where you go to church but instead based upon your values, your vision for the country and your ability to actually help the country at a time of great need."
Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, meanwhile, also took a veiled shot at Romney on a Sunday talk show. "I'm a conservative that hasn't had but one position on a lot of key issues. ... Nobody's going to find some YouTube moments of me saying something radically different than what I'm saying today."
That appeared to be a reference to videos on an online site that show Romney declaring his support for abortion rights, On one such video, which has been viewed more than 200,000 times on the YouTube site, Romney says, "I believe that abortion should be safe and legal in this country."
The Florida debate was scheduled to begin 8 p.m. Sunday on the Fox News Channel -- at the same time another Fox station will broadcast a show that is bound to receive a much higher viewership: Game Seven of the Red Sox-Indians playoff series.
