Jan 28, 2008 2:00 pm US/Pacific
Romney, McCain Rip Each Other's 'Liberal' Side
Sparring Between GOP Frontrunners Heating Up Day Before Winner-Take-All Fla. Primary
ORLANDO, Fla. (CBS) ―
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Fmr Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and Arizona Sen.John McCain during the Republican presidential debate at the University of New Hampshire campus in Durham, N.H. on Sept. 5, 2007.
AP
The Republican candidates are locked in a bitter fight for Florida.
With that state's primary just hours away, John McCain and Mitt Romney are still duking it out, gloves off, with Rudy Giuliani just fighting to survive.
The McCain-Romney fight is now so bitter that on Monday both men were telling voters the other is too liberal to run the country. The race is so tight, a recent Quinnipiac poll has McCain with 32 percent and Romney with 31.
Romney charged that McCain had liberal tendencies for his position on immigration, campaign finance and a controversial energy bill.
"I don't think those liberal answers are the ones Americans are looking for," Romney said at a Fort Meyers event.
"Now there is McCain-Lieberman, his third great piece of legislation that would add about $1,000 per year to your gasoline bill here in Florida."
That charge came on the heels of this charge...
"And so he is known for some things that frankly are not known as conservative/Republican," Romney said.
Calling someone a liberal is a charge that borders on blasphemy in the Republican circles. McCain didn't' take it laying down.
"The truth is Mitt Romney was a liberal governor of Massachusetts who raised taxes and imposed with Ted Kennedy a big government mandated health care plan that is a quarter of a billion dollars in the red," McCain said in Jacksonville, "and managed the state's economy incompetently."
But McCain didn't stop there. He unleashed a new Web ad: "The tale of two Mitts."
"I will preserve and protect a woman's right to choose ... and I'm dedicated to honoring my word in that regard. I am pro-life in favor of that legislation," Romney says in the ad.
With the race too close to call, the war of words continued.
"We have Sen. McCain. He is a good man and an American hero. He'd like to go back to Washington as, well, I say let him go back to Washington in his senate seat and that's fine," Romney said.
McCain focused on his leadership.
"I have led in managing this economy of this country and I'm proud to be part of the Reagan revolution that began the longest period of prosperity in American history," McCain said. "And I led, I didn't manage."
Florida is a winner-take-all primary and a preview to Super Tuesday, Feb. 5, so both men are desperate for a victory.
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