Last night's debate had only four men standing on the stage, the slimmest roster of candidates yet after Rick Perry dropped out of the race earlier in the day and gave his support to Gingrich.
Rick Santorum was brutally effective in bashing Mitt Romney and Gingrich for their support for an individual mandate in a health care reform plan. Gingrich countered that he was man enough to realize that he had seen the light and was wrong to have such an opinion in the early 1990s, but Santorum followed up that he knew from the get-go that such a policy position was wrongheaded.
The former Pennsylvania senator also attacked Gingrich with the same arguments that Romney surrogates who worked with the former House Speaker in the ’90s have said about him: that he is undisciplined. Santorum said that Newt sometimes has a "worrisome moment," raising concerns that "something's going to pop."
“We can’t afford that in a nominee,” Santorum said. “I’m not the most flamboyant and I don’t get the biggest applause lines here, but I’m steady, I’m solid. I’m not going to go out and do things that you’re going to worry about.”
Mitt Romney has had a tough week, and his debate performance wasn't anything to boast about. He was caught flat-footed when asked again when he would release his tax returns. The former Massachusetts governor said he'd do so "when my taxes are complete for this year” — a response that was greeted with a chorus of boos from the fired-up audience.
“I know that if I’m the nominee, the president is going to want to insist that I show what my income was this last year,” Romney says. “So when they’re completed this year in April, I’ll release my returns in April, and probably for other years as well. ... I want to make sure that I beat President Obama, and every time we release things, drip by drip, the Democrats go out with another array of attacks.”
Oh, and by the way, there was news that boosted Santorum and had to deflate Romney just a bit. We'd thought Romney won the Iowa Caucus by 8 votes on January 3, but it turns out he lost it by 34 votes.
Meanwhile the very latest poll out of South Carolina, from Public Policy Polling, has Gingrich up by six points over Romney.
We just might have ourselves an interesting week coming up in Florida after all.
