Republican pacemaker Romney told to ‘level with the US people’

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich accused Mr Romney of “pious baloney” for saying he is not a career politician, demanding that Mr Romney “just level with the American people”.

Mr Romney denied the accusation. “Politics is not my career,” he said. “My life’s passion has been my family, my faith, my country.”

The exchange – and another one in which former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum swapped jibes with Mr Romney – came in the opening moments of the final debate before tomorrow’s first-in-the-nation New Hampshire primary.

Mr Romney, who won the Iowa caucuses last Tuesday by eight votes over Mr Santorum, leads in the polls in New Hampshire, where his rivals have all but conceded he will win. Mr Romney has a holiday home in the state and served for four years as governor of next-door Massachusetts.

Mr Romney’s rivals hope to hold down his margin of victory and are jostling to finish in the top tier in candidates to gain momentum heading into the next nominating contests.

South Carolina comes next, on January 21, the first Southern state to hold a primary, and Mr Romney pointedly noted that he has been endorsed by that state’s governor Nikki Haley.

The debate began only hours after one in which Mr Romney’s rivals made early attempts to knock the former Massachusetts governor off-stride but spent more time squabbling among themselves.

Yesterday’s debate began much the same way as Saturday night, when Mr Gingrich said Mr Romney was a “relatively timid Massachusetts moderate” whose state was fourth from the bottom in job creation when he was governor.

But confronted with one of his campaign leaflets declaring Mr Romney to be unelectable against President Barack Obama, Mr Gingrich hedged. “I think he’ll have a very hard time getting elected.” Mr Romney said he had created more jobs in one state than President Obama has in the entire country, adding that it was important to replace “a lifetime politician” like the president with a different type of leader. Mr Santorum, too, took a swipe at Mr Romney, asking why he had not sought re-election as governor after one term.

“Why did you bail out? And the bottom line is, I go fight the fight,” Mr Santorum said, referring to his time in Congress in the House of Representatives from a heavily Democratic district.

Moments later, Mr Gingrich appeared irked and accused Mr Romney of using more than his allotted time to respond.

“I realise the red light doesn’t mean anything to you because you’re the front-runner.”

“Could we drop a little bit of the pious baloney. The fact is you ran in ‘94 and lost (to Ted Kennedy). You were running for president while you were governor. You’ve been running consistently for years.”

Mr Santorum finished second in Iowa, trailing Mr Romney by only eight votes, followed by Ron Paul, with Mr Gingrich fourth, Texas Governor Rick Perry fifth and Michele Bachmann in last place. She has since quit the race.

Mr Perry drew some laughs as well as applause when he said that federal-employee bureaucrats would experience pain as a result of his plans to cut spending, especially those working in the departments of education, commerce and energy. That was a reference to his gaffe in an earlier debate when he could not recall the name of the third of the Cabinet-level agencies he has proposed eliminating.