POMPANO BEACH, Fla. – Mitt Romney said Monday he has overcome his South Carolina setback and returned to the Republican primary forefront by aggressively returning Newt Gingrich’s fire and by presenting himself as a Washington outsider. Gingrich said Romney is “pretending he’s somebody he’s not.”
Romney said that in the days leading up to the South Carolina’s Jan. 21 primary, he was getting beaten up rhetorically by the former House speaker on a variety of fronts and says he didn’t fight back very well. Now, Romney said, he has “pushed back” more effectively. He said he feels Florida’s voters are responding to his charges that Gingrich benefited from his business relationship with the mortgage giant Freddie Mac at a time when the housing market in the state was taking a dive.
For his part, Gingrich argued that the former Massachusetts governor has bought “an amazing amount of ads” to leverage himself into better position for Florida’s primary Tuesday, but said it won’t work. “I think he’s going to find this a long campaign,” the former speaker said of his rival.
Gingrich said that on the big, philosophical issues, Romney “is for all practical purposes a liberal, I am a conservative.”
“It’s closing here in
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