Sunday’s debate between GOP presidential hopefuls in Orlando featured some of the testiest exchanges yet between the candidates, who also seemed to find an unlikely unifying figure in Democrat candidate Hillary Clinton.

Sponsored by the Republican Party of Florida and Fox News, the debate began with former New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani and former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney fiercely defending their conservative records, in response to a question about former senator Fred Thompson’s (Tenn.) criticism that they lack conservative credentials.

Mr Giuliani hit back that as mayor of “one of the most liberal cities in the country” he had run “the most conservative government in the United States in the last 50 or 60 years”. This, he said, had helped him to reduce crime and taxes, balance the budget and drive pornography out of Times Square.

Mr Romney was the first to invoke the name of Hillary Clinton, boasting that while he was governor, Massachusetts had “solved the problem of health care not by having government take it over, the way Hillary Clinton would, but with private free-enterprise approaches.”

The mission to distinguish themselves as the most solidly conservative candidate was a theme that maintained center-stage throughout the debate.

Taking issue with Mr Romney’s recent claim that he represents “the Republican wing of the Republican party”, Senator John McCain (Ariz.) levelled a stinging counter-attack. “Governor Romney, you’ve been spending the last year trying to fool people about your record,” he said. “I don't want you to start fooling them about mine. I stand on my record. I stand on my record of a conservative.”

Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee drew laughs from the audience when he joked that, for once, he was happy to have sat out the first couple of rounds in the debate. “I am more than content to let them fight all they want, shed each other's blood and then I'll be ready to run for president,” he said.

Mr Huckabee slammed the American health care system as skewed towards increasing costs and ignoring poor outcomes. “We don't have a health care crisis. We have a health crisis,” he said. “Eighty percent of the $2 trillion we spend on health care in this country is spent on chronic disease. If we don't change the health of this nation by focusing on prevention, we're never going to catch up with the costs no matter what plan we have.”

Congressman Ron Paul (Texas), who practiced medicine before entering politics, agreed that the current system failed health consumers and the country. “Nobody seems to be happy,” he said, “except the corporations, the drug companies and the HMOs”.

Most candidates said the crisis could be solved by getting more people to purchase health insurance, although they did not make clear how this could be achieved. Mr Giuliani seemed to blame the uninsured for spending their money on televisions and cell phones instead of private health plans.

All candidates said they were staunch fiscal conservatives and promised to reduce government spending, lower taxes and reform Social Security.

Most said they would implement welfare reform by encouraging private savings. Mr Thompson said his approach included reducing costs by shifting the indexing of benefits from wages to prices.

While the question of ‘who is most conservative’ served as the debate’s most divisive issue, the candidates delighted in the common cause of ridiculing presidential candidate Senator Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.), who is clearly the current front-runner in the polls.

Mr Giuliani quoted Sen. Clinton as saying that she has “… a million ideas; America cannot afford them all.” Mr Giuliani laughed, “No kidding, Hillary. America can’t afford you.”

Sen. McCain dismissed Sen. Clinton’s proposal for a Woodstock Museum as wasteful. “Now, my friends, I wasn't there – I'm sure it was a cultural and pharmaceutical event,” he quipped to howls of laughter. “I was tied up at the time,” he added, referring to his time spent as a prisoner of war in Vietnam.

Most candidates voiced strong support for the war in Iraq and a tougher stance on foreign policy, regardless of popular opinion. “I would much rather lose a campaign than lose a war,” said Sen. McCain to a round of applause.

Rep. Paul provoked the night’s only boos from the audience when he spoke out against the war and what he called “interventionist” foreign policy. “Our president won the election in the year 2000 to have a more humble foreign policy, not to go into nation-building,” he said. “We jeopardize ourselves and, quite frankly, we're not able to afford this.”

Noting that over 70 percent of American voters oppose the war in Iraq, a statistic that includes a substantial number of Republican voters, he said the war is a prime example of how the GOP had alienated its traditional base and paid the price at election time.

“Republicans are the big spenders … big-government conservatives,” he said. “They’re part of the neo-conservative movement. They've lost their traditions about traditional conservatism and the Constitution.”




 

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