Final Four GOP Candidates Square Off in CNN Debate

CHARLESTON — And then there were four.

The remaining candidates for the Republican nomination for president, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum and Texas Rep. Ron Paul, squared off Thursday night in North Charleston in the final debate ahead of the South Carolina Primary on Saturday.

Texas earlier on Thursday.

CNN moderator John King opened the debate asking Gingrich about an ABC News interview with one of his ex-wives in which she revealed that he asked her to have an open marriage. Gingrich called it despicable to even bring it up.

"I am frankly astounded that CNN would take trash like that and use it to open a presidential debate," Gingrich said. "I'm tired of the elite media protecting Barack Obama by attacking Republicans."

But King continued to ask about it, asking each of the other candidates if they thought it was an issue.

None of them took the bait directly, but Romney and Paul both managed to slip in mentions of how long they have been married in their opening remarks at the beginning of the debate. But faced directly with the question of whether such a claim was germane to the campaign Santorum, Romney and Paul used their responses to chastize King for raising the issue.

"John, let's get on to the real issues," Romney said.

With an early show of solidarity, the candidates saved most of their criticisms of Obama, though all of the candidates sparred over a few issues during the evening.

The first followed an audience question asking whether the candidates thought there is a realistic chance to repeal the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, a.k.a Obamacare, when Santorum attacked Romney over his own healthcare law in Massachusetts.

"Govenor Romney tells a nice story about his plan, but when he had a chance to put up a plan, it wasn't the bottom-up plan he talks about now," Santorum said. "He put up Romneycare, which was the basis for Obamacare and it's been an abject failure."

Santorum said Romney would have a tough time arguing against Obamacare when Obama can point to Romneycare and say he did the same thing. He charged that the Massachusetts program was a top-down, government run system that has resulted in the state having the highest healthcare costs in the nation.

Romney countered that the Massachusetts system was not a government run system, but a private one, and that the state already had the highest health care costs in the nation before Romneycare.

Santorum also went after Gingrich over his prior support of an individual mandate, saying that Gingrich at one time said if someone refused to purchase insurance they should be required to post a $150,000 bond.

Gingrich shot back that he led the fight against health care reform in the Clinton administration. He also said he helped found the Center for Health Transformation, which has hundreds of proposals on how to fix the healthcare system.

Santorum hit back that the individual mandate is the core of the problem with Obamacare. Santorum said Gingrich supported an individual mandate for 10 years and Gingrich won't be able to ignore that fact in a debate with Obama.

"I can say I was wrong and I figured it out, you were wrong and you didn't," Gingrich shot back.

Paul, who almost didn't get a chance to weigh in said he didn't think a full repeal of the law is realistic. Paul said the law is, in part, because of Congress both past and present.

"What I'm more worried about is government control of healthcare," Paul said. "Even when we had the chance to cut back we added a prescription drug program [the Medicare Part D prescription drug program] and that expanded government and Sen. Santorum supported it."

Santorum and Gingrich had several volatile exchanges throughout the debate, including one in which Santorum questioned whether Gingrich would essentially shoot himself in the foot during the general election campaign and in doing so, sink the Republican Party's chance of retaking the White House.

"Grandiosity has never been a problem for Newt Gingrich," Santorum said. "But I don't want a nominee that you have to go out to the paper every morning and worry about what the nominee is going to say today."

Santorum painted himself as a sure and steady option and that voters wouldn't have to worry about him making outrageous statements.

Gingrich countered that America is a gradiose country, full of grandiose people with lots of gradiose ideas. And he defended some of his grandiose ideas, such as building a Republican majority in the House of Representatives for the first time in decades.

Moderator King then turned to Romney asking him why he's led the pack in charging that Gingrich would be an unreliable leader.

"One of the things I find amusing is listening to how much credit is taken in Washington (D.C.) for things that happen in Main Street," Romney said. "Newt, I've read Ronald Reagan's diary and he mentioned you one time... he said he had a meeting with a young congressman who had an idea, and it was a bad one."

Gingrich responded that Romney was successful on "Main Street" because in the '80s the country had the right laws, the right regulators, and the right leadership, as opposed to all of those factors being wrong under the Carter Adminstration.

"You were Speaker for four years," Romney shot back. "I was in business 25 years, there's no way you're going to get credit for my success in business."

All four men came out against the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), which drove protest blackouts at sites like Wikipedia on Wednesday, saying the law as written flawed.