Mitt Romney�s Republican challengers made a last-ditch effort to take down their party�s front-runner in Sunday morning�s GOP primary debate, assailing Romney�s conservative credentials and his self-description as a political outsider.
Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum, Romney�s two most formidable opponents on the right, charged at the former Massachusetts governor from the start.
The two conservative upstarts mounted a tag-team attack on Romney. Santorum accused Romney of �bailing� from a difficult 2006 reelection campaign; when Romney cast that and his other time out of office as a selfless choice, Gingrich pounced.
�Can we drop a little bit of the pious baloney?� Gingrich asked Romney. �You were running for president while you were governor � You then promptly reentered politics. You lost to McCain, just as you lost to [Ted] Kennedy [in 1994.�
Gingrich kept going: �Just level with the American people. You�ve been running at least since the 1990s.�
Romney, facing a sustained assault on the debate stage for the first time this cycle, stuck to his version of the events.
�I never thought I�d get involved in politics,� he responded, saying of his race against Kennedy: �I happened to have been wise enough to realize I didn�t have a ghost of a chance of beating him.�
