MYRTLE BEACH, S.C. — Jon Huntsman earlier condemned the “toxic” tone of the Republican primary battle — but a narrowed field of GOP candidates paid little attention, beginning Monday’s debate in South Carolina with a series of attacks on frontrunner Mitt Romney.
Abandoning his quest for the presidency Monday morning, former Utah Gov. Huntsman said the race had “degenerated into an onslaught of negative and personal attacks not worthy of the American people and not worthy of this critical time in American history.”
But with former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Texas Gov. Rick Perry vying to win social conservatives over as the “Romney alternative” in South Carolina’s Jan. 21 primary, all were playing hardball.
Santorum boldly interrogated Romney during the FOX News/Wall Street Journal debate about his position on voting rights for convicted felons. He also criticized the former Massachusetts governor for not stopping ads being run by a pro-Romney super PAC that Santorum said were incorrect.
Pro-Romney group, Restore Our Future, has run ads implying Santorum wanted to let felons vote from prison, but Santorum said he would only give voting rights to those people who had already paid their debt to society.
Santorum then launched at Romney, saying, “I would ask Gov. Romney, do you believe people who are felons who have served their time, who have exhausted their parole and probation, should they be given the right to vote?”
When Romney failed to answer directly, instead speaking of the rules that govern super PACs, Santorum cut in to demand a response to his question.
“We have plenty of time,” Romney replied. “I’ll get there. I’ll do it in the order I want to.”
But Santorum failed to let the issue go, saying it was a particularly relevant question on Martin Luther King Day, given the disproportionately high rates of incarceration for African-Americans.
Finally Romney responded, “I don’t think people who committed violent crimes should be allowed to vote again,” leading Santorum to seize on his answer.
“In the state of Massachusetts, when you were governor, the law was not only could violent felons vote,” Santorum explained, but they could do so while on parole or probation. “If in fact you felt so passionately about this then why didn’t you try to change that when you were governor of Massachusetts?”
Romney said his hands were tied by an 85 percent Democratic legislature.
The issue of accuracy in super PAC ads — and the candidates’ limited influence over even advertisments supporting them — was raised again later in an exchange between Romney and Gingrich.
Perry, meanwhile, called on Romney to release his tax records, so “the people of South Carolina can decide whether we’ve got a flawed candidate or not.”
Perry said he had already released his records and Gingrich planned to do so this week, so it was now time for former venture capitalist Romney to do so as well — “so the people of this country can see how you made your money.”
Romney responded to the call by speaking about his work at Bain Capital, something Perry also questioned, but did not immediately address the issue of his tax returns. Later in the debate, at Myrtle Beach Convention Center, Romney said traditionally candidates had released their tax records around April and indicated he would “probably” do the same.
“I looked at what has been done with campaigns in the past … they’ve tended to release tax records in April, or tax season,” Romney said. “I hadn’t planned on releasing tax records … if that’s been the tradition, I’m not opposed to doing that, time will tell, but I anticipate most likely I’m going to get asked again around [April].”
The debate opened with FOX News’ Bret Baier asking Gingrich about his recent attacks on Romney, after he had said in a previous debate that he would not be using negative tactics during the campaign.
“We need to satisfy that whoever we nominate has a record that can stand up to Barack Obama in a very effective way,” Gingrich said.
“I raised questions that I think are legitimate questions. It’s part of his [Romney’s] responsibility as a candidate” to answer such questions.
As the candidates drew away from attacking each other and moved onto the issue of foreign policy, Romney said the US should not negotiate with the Taliban to end the war on Afghanistan, saying strongly, “Of course we should not. We go anywhere they are, and we kill ’em.”
Texas Rep. Ron Paul, meanwhile, continued to push his foreign policy ideas that sit outside the Republican mainstream, saying, “We need to quit the wars we’re in,” a call that drew boos from the crowd.
“If another country does to us what we do to others, we are not going to like it very much,” Paul said. “Maybe we ought to consider a golden rule in foreign policy … We endlessly bombed these countries and we wonder why they get upset with us and it continues on and on.”
Romney, addressing Paul, said the best way to deter enemies of the US was to build a military so strong that no one wants to test it.
Perry used the defense discussion to again defend the four US Marines seen urinating on Taliban corpses in a video — and slammed the Obama administration for calling the controversial act “despicable.”
He acknowledged that the men “made a mistake,” adding that they should be punished by the military.
However he added, “When the Secretary of State calls that a despicable act, let me tell you what’s despicable — cutting Danny Pearl’s head off and videotaping it,” a reference to the slaying by terrorists of Wall Street Journal reporter, Daniel Pearl.
The statement drew criticism from Wall Street Journal economics editor David Wessel who wrote on Twitter, “Danny Pearl, of blessed memory, would have condemned US soldiers urinating on corpses (esp on camera).”