Tuesday, September 13, 2011
Associated Press
TAMPA, Fla.
Attacked from all sides, Texas Gov. Rick Perry softened his rhetoric if not his position on Social Security in a snarky campaign debate Monday night and fended off attacks on his record creating jobs and requiring the vaccination of schoolgirls against a cancer-causing sexually transmitted virus.
Across a crackling two-hour debate, the front-runner in opinion polls gave little ground and jabbed back, particularly at his most- persistent critic, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney.
But the attacks were sustained — from Romney on Social Security, Texas Rep. Ron Paul saying Perry had raised taxes, Rep. Michele Bachmann and former Senate Rick Santorum assailing the governor’s executive order to require Texas schoolgirls to get a STD vaccine.
“A program that’s been there 70 or 80 years, obviously we’re not going to take that away,” Perry said in the debate’s opening moments as Romney pressed him on his earlier statements questioning the constitutionality of Social Security and calling it a Ponzi scheme.
The Texas governor counter- attacked quickly, accusing Romney of “trying to scare seniors” with his own comments on a program that tens of millions of Americans — including millions in the debate state of Florida alone — rely on for part or all of their retirement income.
The eight rivals shared a debate stage for the second time in less than a week, a pace that marked a quickening in the campaign to choose a challenger to President Barack Obama in 2012.