With little over a month before the Iowa caucuses, it didn’t take long for former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney to jump at each other in Wednesday’s YouTube/CNN debate as they jockey for front-runner status in the GOP field. The first user-submitted question concerned immigration, bringing up simmering battles from the campaign trail and setting the tone for a contentious evening.
After the debate started with a GOP debate song clip, the first question, posed to Giuliani was from a fellow New Yorker: “If you become president of the United States, will you continue to aid and abet the flight of illegal aliens into this country?”
“New York City was not a sanctuary city.” Giuliani answered detailing New York’s immigration policies. Romney, however, said New York was “absolutely a sanctuary city,” and the two began back-and-forth attacks on their immigration policy differences with Giuliani calling his rival’s house a “sanctuary mansion.”
In the next question about amnesty for illegal immigrants, former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson put up a veiled attack at Giuliani in Romney’s defense saying, “I think we’ve all had people who we’ve hired who in retrospect was a bad decision,” referring to Bernard Kerik, who served under Giuliani as police commissioner in New York and now faces federal corruption charges. Colorado Rep. Tom Tancredo, who has made immigration his top issue, said he was happy to see “people trying to out-Tancredo Tancredo.”
The war of words between Giuliani and Romney began before the two took stage, and last weekend in New Hampshire the two rivals have attacked each other’s records on everything from crime to health care to tax cuts. They have even traded barbs over who has made the worst political appointment.
On Thursday morning, Romney’s campaign sent out a flurry of press releases supporting the charge that Giuliani offered sanctuary to illegal immigrants in New York City, some with the title Sanctuary State of Mind.
Romney leads the GOP field in New Hampshire polls while Giuliani is ahead in national polling. According to National Review Editor Rich Lowry, “Right after Thanksgiving, some sort of light bulb went off in both of those campaigns and they decided to throw everything they have at the other.” University of Virginia political analyst Larry Sabato told CBS News “Giuliani understands from past presidential contests that if Romney wins both Iowa and New Hampshire handsomely, he may be unstoppable.”
Romney has not reserved his attacks for just Giuliani. Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, who has been closing in on Romney’s lead in the Hawkeye state, has also been a recent target. During the Wednesday night debate, Romney criticized Huckabee for supporting measures to give scholarships to children of illegal immigrants while governor.
Earlier this week in Iowa, Romney told CNN that Huckabee has liberal positions on economics and immigration, saying “He may be conservative on social issues, but when it comes to economic issues like immigration, he’s a liberal on immigration. He fought for tuition breaks for illegal aliens. He raised taxes time and time again as governor of Arkansas.”
Wednesday night’s debate touched on other hot button Republican issues such as abortion, gun rights and the Bible, but none of the other candidates called Giuliani out for a story that broke hours earlier in the Politico questioning why he billed the cost of his security detail while New York City mayor to obscure city offices and then possibly used the money for trips to visit his current wife Judith Nathan. At the time, Giuliani was still married to his second wife, Donna Hanover. Moderator Anderson Cooper questioned Giuliani about the story, which said he, “It’s not true. I had 24-hour security for the eight years that I was mayor. They followed me everyplace I went. It was because there were, you know, threats, threats that I don’t generally talk about.”
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