>> we're live in charleston, south carolina. iowa declares a new winner. rick perry bows out, and 35 hours before the polls open here in south carolina, we have a dead heat. a southern republican presidential debate starts right now. the part of the republican party where tradition lives. >> the strongest military in the world. >> and values matter. >> we want a conservative on the ticket. >> tonight, the republican candidate on stage in south carolina for their final debate before the south primary. mitt romney, the front runner, going for another win. trying to close a deal with skeptical voters. >> work to get good jobs back. >> newt gingrich, armed arrived, trying to harness conservative support as the field gets smaller. >> i am the only candidate capable of stopping a moderate from winning the nomination. >> rick santorum, with renewed momentum, after learning that he won iowa after all. >> we defeated mitt romney in iowa. >> ron paul, the insurgent, a powerful force in the first contest with an army of young voters. >> we are dangerous to the status quo. >> now, south carolina is ready to put its stamp on the 2012 presidential race. >> the president of the united states. >> welcome to charleston and the fight for the south. >> from the north charleston coliseum, this is the southern republican presidential debate. the remaining four candidates are with us. welcome this even. i'm john king. this is the final debate before the presidential primary on saturday. republican leaders here on south carolina, 13 other southern states in the audience along with members of the tea party patriots. some members will get a chance to question the candidates. you can send us your questions online, on twitter, include the hash tag, cnn debate. on facebook, facebook.com/cnnpolitics, and on cnn politics.com. time to meet the contenders. the texas congressman, ron paul. the former speaker of the house, newt gingrich. the former massachusetts governor, mitt romney. and the former senator from and the former senator from pennsylvania, rick santorum. >> ladies and gentlemen, the republican presidential candidate. now, just before we came on the air tonight, we recited the pledge of allegiance. now please rise for the national anthem. we're plezed to have it performed by military cadets from right here in charleston, south carolina. ♪ oh, say can you see by the dawn's early lights ♪ what so proudly we hailed at the twie lites's first gleaming ♪ ♪ with bright stars through the perilous fight oer the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming ♪ ♪ and the rockets' red glare the bombs bursting in air ♪ ♪ gave proof through the night that our flag was still there ♪ ♪ oh say does that star-spangled banner yet wave ♪ ♪ oer the land of the free and the home of the brave ♪ >> that was fabulous. absolutely fabulous. i want to ask the candidates to get comfortable at their podium and i'lltle tell you how the debate is going to work. i'll ask questions and so will members of the audience. we'll try to make sure that each of you get your time. you'll have one minute to answer and 30 seconds for rebuttle. and i'll make sure you get time to response if you're criticized. i'm john king from cnn, i'm rooting for the patriots this weekend, and i'm honored to be your moderator. >> i'm rick santorum and i want to thank the people for their posputality to my wife and our seven children and i want to thank the people of iowa for a delayed but most welcome victory. thank you to the people of iowa. >> i'm mitt romney, good to be back in south carolina. see many good friends here. also good to be here with my wife and some of my kids, married about 42 years, have five sons. five daughter-in-laws 16 grandkids and they're the joy of my life. thank you. >> mr. speaker. >> i i'm newt gingrich, want to thank the people of south carolina for being so hospitable to a georgen. feels good to be back home in the south and i look forward to serving you. >> congressman paul. >> thank you very much. great to be here tonight. i'm a congressman from texas, been elected 12 times, and also i practice ob/gyn for a 30-year period, also served five years in the military and i'm the only u.s. veteran on the stage tonight. >> you have met the candidates. time now to begin the debate, an event that has a dramatically different feel from a few hours ago. romney won the caucuses, there were five podiums on the stage when the sun came up. four now because of rick perry's decision to drop out, and just as speaker gingrich served to contention in south carolina, a fresh character attack on the speaker. i want to start with that this evening. as you know, your ex-wife gave an interview to abc news and the washington post and she said you came to her in 1989 at a time you were having an affair. she said you asked her, sir, to enter into an open marriage. would you like to respond to that? >> no, but i will. i think the destructive, vicious, negative nature of much of the news media makes it harder to govern this country, harder to attract decent people to run for public office, and i'm appalled that you would begin a presidential debate with a topic like that. >> is that all you want to say, sir? >> let me finish, wait. every person in here knows personal things, every person in here has had someone close to them go through painful things. to take an ex-wife and make it two days before the primary, a significant question in the presidential campaign is as close to despicable as anything i can imagine. my two daughters -- my two daughters wrote to the head of abc, and made the point that it was wrong, that they should pull it, and i am frankly astounded that cnn would take trash like that and use it to open a presidential debate. >> as you noted, mr. speaker, the story did not come from our network. it is a subject of conversation in the campaign. i take your point. >> it was repeated by your network, you chose to start the debate with it. don't blame someone else. you and your staff chose to start the debate with it. no, let me be quite clear. let me be quite clear, the story is false, every personal friend who knew us in that period knew the stora was false. we offered several of them to abc to prove it was false. they weren't interested because they want to attack any republican, they're attacking the governor, attacking me. they'll get around to senator santorum and congressman paul. i'm tired of the elite media protected barack obama by attacking the public. >> i noted -- as i noted at the beginning, we have four podiums on the stage tonight and not five. he exited the race this morning, governor perry quickly and forcefully endorsed spiker gingrich, and he said, no he's not a perfect man. he said none of us are, and he said he believes in his christian faith that guides him to the value of redemption. speaker gingrich doesn't believe it's an issue. governor perry doesn't think it's an issue. do you think it is? >> i have answered this question repeatedly throughout the course of the campaign. i am a christian, too, and i thank got for forgiveness, but you know, these are issues of our lives and what we have done in our lives. issues of character for people to consider. the bottom line is those are things for everyone in this audience to look at. and they'll look at me, look at what i have done in my private life and personal life. what i say is this country is a very forgiving country. this country understands that we're all fallen, and i'm hopeful that we will be judged by that standard and not by a higher one on the ultmal day. >> governor romney? >> john, let's get down to the real issues, that's what i have to say. >> congressman? >> i think too often all of us are on the receiver end of attacks from the media. it's very disturbing because sometimes they're not based on facts, and we suffer the consequences. sometimes it reminds me of the idea of getting corporations out of running campaigns, but what about the corporations that run the media? they're always in competition. i think i have a responsibility to sort facts and fiction, that people have to sort this out, but i think setting standards are important and i'm proud that my wife of 54 years is with me tonight. >> as i said at the top of the debate, we'll take some questions from the audience, we have reached out to people online and voters who would like to be there. i want to turn to one of the voters, jane gallagher from south carolina. as everyone in the audience in south carolina knows, we're in a state with 9.9% unemployment. she asked does three or hour specific programs that will put american people back to work. congress paul, do you believe we need specific federal programs to put the american people back to work? >> most of the things the federal government can do to get us back to work is get out of the way. i would like to see the federal government have a sound currency. that creates a healthy economy. i would like to see massive reduction of regulations. i would like to see economic tax reduced to near zero as possible. and that is what we have to do. we have to get the government out of the way. we have to recognize why we have unemployment, and it comes because we have a deeply flawed financial system that causes financial bubbles, the bubbles burst and you have unemployment. the most important thing to get over the hump that was created by bad economic policy is to allow the corrections to occur. you have to get rid of the excessive dent and maladjustment. you don't buy it off the people who were benefitting from it. we the people shouldn't be stuck with the debt. we need to get that behind us. that means the government shouldn't be doing any bail-outs. we need to get the government out of the way and force contract laws and enforce bankruptcy laws. >> mr. speaker, as you can't dress what you would like to do and also the question, do we need federal programs? >> there are three things that could be done, specifically at a south carolina level. one to do at a national level, and that's to reveal the dodd frank bill. that would help overnight. three specifics, one, there's $29 billion of national gas off shore, and louisiana jobs for that production are $80,000 a year. that would help us become energy independent from the middle east, and that could be used to modernize the court of charleston and georgetown. it has to be modernized to meet the larger ships. one of every five jobs in south carolina are dependent on the port of charleston. the third thing frankly is fundamentally radically overhaul the core of engineers, the corps of engineers today takes eight years to complete, doing the port. we won the entire second world war in three years and eight months. >> a subset sof the jobs conversations among the candidates over the past week mr. speaker has been from you and governor perry, sharp criticism of romney's tenure with bain capital. what do you think he did wrong that makes you question his ability to be president. >> there were specific cases, georgetown steel, where bain capital's motto, which is to take over a company and dramatically leverage it, leave it with a great level of debt, makes it harder to supply. he cited his experience as a key part of his preparation for being president. so i think the underlying model of that kind of investment, which is different from venture capitalism, ought to be explained and those cases ought to be looked at. >> let me give you a chance, explain. >> i hope i get a chance to talk about the topic you began with. we'll come back to the direct attack from speaker gingrich. let's talk about first what to to do get the economy going. we have spoken about the tax code cothat is out of alignment with other nations, the fact that the nation is overwhelming us, we need to take care of our energy resources, open the market and track down on china when they cheat. i would like to talk about something else president obama has been doing, practicing crony capitalism. you have to stop the spread of crony capitalism. he gives general motors to the uaw. takes $500 million and sticks it into sulindra they can say no tobying and take care of their friends in the labor movement. he went across the country with regards to the labor industry. he turns down the keystone pipe line which would bring energy and jobs to america. this president is the biggest impediment to job growth in the country, and we have to replace barack obama to get america working again. >> so let's go back -- i'm glad you had that opportunity. i want to go back and see if we can clear it up. the questions about bain, many have been about the number. you said 120,000 jobs that you can tie back to decisions you made at bain capital. take your time and do the math on how you get to 100,000 or 120,000. >> i know we're going to get attacked from the left by barack obama on capitalism. people should say you should only practice it this way or that way and think they know better than the private market. capitalism works, free enterprise works, and i find it kind of strange on a stage like this with republicans having to describe how private equity and venture capital work. let me tell you the answer, we started a number of businesses, four in particular created 120,000 jobs as of today. we started them years ago, they have grown well beyond the time i was there to 120,000 people. there are others we have been with, some of which have lost jobs. people have evaluated that. well, since i ran four years ago, when i ran for governor, and those that have been documented have lost jobs, lost about 10,000 jobs. so 120,000, less 10,000, means we created over 100,000. and there are some, by the way, that were businessed we acquired that grew and became more successful like domino's pizza. i'm proud of the fact that throughout my career, i have worked to try to build enterprises, hopefully to return money to investors. there's nothing wrong with profit. that profit -- that profit went to pension funds, to charities, it went to a wide array of institutions. a lot of people benefits from that, and by the way, as enterprises become more profitable, they can hire more people. i believe in free enterprise. i'm going to stand and defend capitalism throughout the country throughout this campaign. we're going to hit it hard president obama and point it out that it's capitalism and freedom that makes america strong. >> senator santorum, join the conversation, specifically to the initial question from bain, what should the federal government be doing? if you share the speaker's concern about governor romney's tenure at pain? >> i believe in capitalism, too. i believe in capitalism for everybody, not necessarily high finance, but that works for the men and women of the country who are padding alone in america. we have an unemployment rate two and a half times, and the nment party, he wants to make them more empty, give them more food stamps, give them more medicaid. i was talking to an official who was telling me that the state of alabama was fined because they're not signing up enough people for the medicaid program. this is the economy that barack obama has visited on working men and women in the country. it's creating more programs and getting more dependent on the programs. we need a party that doesn't just talk about high finance and cutting the tax rate. we need to talk ability how to put men and women in this country back to work in this country in the manufacturing sector. and -- and there's one candidate that has done that. i have done that. i have done that throughout the course of the campaign. i talked about who we were going to target to make sure we could be competitive. i was up at bmw yesterday. south carolina can compete with anybody in this world in manufacturing. we just need to give them the opportunity to compete, and we're 20% more profitable, our top nine trading partners, and that's including labor costs. we need to cut it down to zero, give manufacturers a leg up to compete for the jobs, half of which, 21% of the jobs in the manufacturing down to 9%, and show we're the party, we're the movement that is going to get the reagan democrats, the conservative democrats all throughout the state that we need to win the election to sign up with us and we'll put them back to work. >> let's stay on the economy and the south carolina experience all of you have had. this is a state incredibly proud of the military tradition and incredibly proud of the veterans. many of the veterans have served post 9/11, served in afghanistan and iraq coming back to a terrible economy. right now, unemployment rate for post 9/11 veterans 18 to 24 is at 22%. congressman paul, to you first, sir, should the federal government be specifically targeting that part. they're saying the unemployment rate is so high that the government should offer tax incentives or take other steps to help them to get jobs. >> to some degree, but you really want to make the environment, the economy healthy for everybody and not designate special places. it is probably necessary on some occasions, but we have to think about how serious our problems are because we face something much, much greater after world war ii, 10 million came home all at once. but what did we do then? there were some of the liberals back then that said we have to have more work programs and this the that, and they thought they would have to do everything to compete for the 10 million. they never got around to it because they came home so quickly. the government cut the budget by 60%, they cut taxes by 30%, by that time, the debt had been liquidated and everybody went back to work again. you didn't need any special programs. so one thing, talking about the military and veterans, i'm very proud that i get twice as many donations from the military people than all of the rest put together. very very concerned about them, where the real problem is that we can create a healthy economic environment if we did the right thing. but where the veterans really deserve help, as a physician and a congressman, is the people who come back and aren't doing well health wise, they need a lot more help. we have an epidemic now of suicide of the military coming back. so they need a lot of medical help, and i think they come off short-changed. they come up short-changed after the vietnam war, persian gulf war, and now. they don't get care. >> i believe we agree there's a generational issue in the country. i want to stay on the economy. senator santorum, you started t shake your head. should the government be stepping in and saying we need to help the group that is hurting, the veterans? >> we have and should continue to have help for the veterans, people who went out and served the country, should have preference of jobs when they come back to work in the economy. my dad and mom worked for the veterans administration, i lived on a va grounds for the first 18 years of my life, and i saw the impact of the vietnam war on the veterans who came back, and they came back very damaged. not just from physical wounds bought a lot of psychological ones and that's a part of the high unemployment rate we're dealing with. we need to be much more aggressive. the president of the united states said he's going to cut veterans benefit, cut the military at a time where they have done five, six, seven tours, coming back, in and out of jobs. sacrificing everything for the country, and the president for the united states can't cut one penny out of the social welfare system and wants to cut a trillion out of the military and hit our veterans, and that's disgusting. >> governor, he makes the case that it is the time, as all of you know, for tough budget decisions. what do you do? >> well, let's distinguish between what gets done at the federal level and the state level. in our state, we found a way to help veterans by saying if you're in the national guard, we'll pay for your education, college degree. we'll give you a full ride. we also had a plan that said if you come back and have been out of work for a year or more, we'll put a bonus on your back, which if someone hires you, that goes to them to pay for your trainin let's do it at the state level. let's take the money that we use to help people who have real needs and? steads of having it all administered by the federal government, let's take the money, bundle up south carolina's fair share and every other state's fair share and say you care for your people in the way you feel best. let's do it at a state level, and i agree to what santorum said. right now, for the president to be cutting $350,000 from the military budget, cutting $350 billion, another $650 billion, a trillion dollars, his secretary of defense says that represents a dooms day scenario. we have an aging navy, an aging air force. they can't possibly keep up with the needs of the veterans. it's absolutely wrong to balance the budgets on the backs of the military. we need a strong military, so strong no one in the world would think of testing it. >> we're going to have conversations with the commander in chief, specifically veterans who need jobs. >> i want to say two things about congressman paul's history. the u.s. government did two dramatic things after world war ii, they created a gi bill that enabled millions of returning veterans to go to college for the first time. my father who was in the second world war, went to college on the gi bill. there was an enormous expansion of opportunity to enable them to integrate into the emerging society, and the second thing was they cut taxes and the economy grew and it absorbed the work force. we ought to have a transition process for veterans to enable them to get a job when they come home, and allow them to have an aggressive program of regulatory cuts and tax cuts so the entire population is absorbed by getting back to about 4% unemployment where every veteran would have a good job at the end of the transition period. >> let's turn to the audience and take a audience. >> i'm from tennessee. my question to any of the candidates is do you believe that obama care can be repealed or reversed in its entirety? >> let me go first to romney on this. you said you would do it on day one with an executive order that would allow the states to opt out. you friends in south carolina might like to have that option. help me understand as you do that, how would it play out and what happens to those, someone with a pre-existing condition, that has coverage or a young american, 22, 23, 24, who because of changes in the law, can now stay a couple extra years on their parents' health care. what happens to them? >> the executive order is a process, but it doesn't eliminate obama care. it's something to pull out of obama care. we have to go after a complete repeal. that's going to have to happen -- >> that's going to happen with the house and senate, if we don't have a republican majority, we're going to have to convince the democrats when they say we don't want obama care, the higher taxes, we do not want a $500 billion cut in medicare to pay for obama care, you're going to see the american people stand with our president and say let's get rid of obama care and replace it, we'll have a bill that does care for people with pre-existing conditions. if they have been previously insured, they won't be denied insurance. secondly, i'll allow people to own their own insurance rather than just get it from their employer. i want them to take it with them if they go from job to job. we'll make it work in a way that is designed to have health care work like a market as opposed to make it run by amtrak and the post office. that's what is at risk. at stake here, do we -- we go back to this, ours is a party of free enterprise, freedom, markets of consumer choice. theirs is a party of government gauj, where barack obama believes he knows what is right. he's wrong, we're right. >> it's a southern republican voter, but he's skeptical. he's asked if it can be reversed in its entirety. how can it be repealed in this political environment? >> if you watch washington and you're not skeptical, you haven't learned anything. this system is a total mess right now second, you elect the house and senate and president elected to that. it has to be a major part of the fall campaign. on our side with any of us, it's a major part of the fall campaign. the american people are frightened, bureaucratic centralized medicine. they distrust washington, and romney said sound stuff for part of the replacement. i would repeal all of it because i so deeply distrust the congressional staffs that where wouldn't want them to pick and choose which things they kept. you raise a good example. why is president obama allowing people to stay on their insurance until they're 26? because he can't get them jobs to buy their own insurance. >> i have an offer to the parents of america, elect us and your kids will be able to move out so they'll have work. >> senator santorum, you heard governor romney and speaker gingrich. do you trust them if one of them is the republican party's nominee and the next president of the united states? >> the biggest thing we have to do is elect a president. newt is right. two of the people up here would be difficult to elect on i think the most important issue that this country is dealing with right now. robbing us of our freedom because of obama care. rom nay tells a nice story of what his story is now. when he was governor of massachusetts, he put together romney care, which was not a free market system. it was a government-run health care system that was the basis of obama care and it's been an abject failure, and he stood by it. stood by the fact it's $8 billion more expensive. he stood by the fact that massachusetts has the highest health insurance premiums of any state in the country. 27% more expensive than the average state in the country. doctors, massachusetts health care system, over 50% of the doctors are not seeing new patients, those who do get to see a patient are waiting 44 days on average for care. it's an abject disaster. he's standing by it and he's going to have to run against the president, run against the president who is going to say, look, look what you did for massachusetts and you're the one criticizing me for what i have done. i used your model for it. then -- then we ask speaker gingrich who asked for a individual mandate, not the time in the '90s, but his latest comments in 2008 just a few years ago, he said he would accept an individual mandate. how many $150,000 bond holders do we have to post a bond for their health insurance. these are two folks who don't present the clear contrast that i do who was the author of health savings account, conservative health care. i was the author of it back in 1991 and '92, 20 years ago. i have been fighting for health reform, private sector, bottom up, the way america works best for 20 years while these two were playing ftse with the left. >> senator santorum challenges the governor and speaker. governor, you first. >> so much of what the senator said was wrong. let me mention a few of the things. first, the system in my state is not a government-run statement. 92% had their own insurance before the system was put in place and nothing changed for them, and the 8% of the uninsured brought private insurance, not government inshrbs, and the people in the state still favor the plan 3-1. massachusetts, by the way, had the highest insurance costs before the plan was put in place and after, but fortunately, their rate of growth has slowed down less than the nation, and one of the things i was proud of that individuals who wanted to buy their own insurance sought their rates because they're not a big part of a group, saw them drop by 40%. is it perfect? absolutely not. having been there, on the front lines, showing i have compassion for people who don't have insurance but that the obama plan is a 2007 page massive tax increase, medicare cutting monster. i'll repeal it and return the pow toor the states where the power for caring for the inuninsured should lie. >> your facts are wrong. >> they're not wrong. the fact is, you're right, 92% of the people did have health insurance in massachusetts. that wasn't private sector insurance. they're on medicare and medicaid, so they're on government insurance and you expanded over half of the people who came on the role since you put romney care in effect, and a lot of those were on the medicaid program. the idea you have created this marketplace with this government-run health care system where you have very prescriptive progras about reimbursement rateses like obama has. you're defending a program that is not a free market health care system. it's not bottom up. it's a basis for obama care, and you do not draw a distinction that is going to be effective for us because it was a state level, not the federal level. >> if you want, governor, quickly. >> as you know, medicaid is not a state program. >> of course, it isn't, state and federal. >> it's demanded by the federal government, and it's shared 50/50, state and federal. the people of massachusetts are on mmedicaid, i would like to take the medicaid dollars and return them to the state. that would make the plan we have in massachusetts a heck of a lot better. return it to the state, and if you want to be governor of massachusetts, fine. but i want to be president and let states take responsibility for their own plans. >> mr. speaker, senator santorum made the point that you don't have credibility on this. >> what he said which i found mildly amazing is i would have a hard time debating barack obama over health care. in fact, as republican w.h.i.p., i led the charge against hillary care in the house, as speaker of the house, i helped reside over the conference that wrote into law his idea on health savingsathies, so i was delighted to help him get it to be a law. and i helped found the center for health transformation, i wrote a book called "saving lives and saving money" in 2002. you can go to healthtransformation.net and see hundreds of ideas, none of which resemble obama's programs, so i would be happy to have a lincoln-douglass style debate with obama. i'll let him use a teleprompter, i'll use common knowledge. we'll do fine. >> you're shaking your head. quickly. >> obama care is an individual mandate that is what is being litigated in supreme court right now. it's government talk down telling every business and every american what kind of health care you will have. that is the problem with obama care at the core of it, and the speaker supported it repeatedly for a ten-year program. so when he goes and says run rings around president obama in a lincoln-douglas debate, you supported the core basis of what obama set in place. >> one brief comment, of course you can. you can say, i was wrong and i figured it out. you were wrong and you didn't. >> you held that position for over ten years. and you know, it's not going to be the most attractive thing to go out there and say, it took me 10 or 12 years to figure out i was wrong when guys like rick santorum knew it was wrong from the beginning. >> congressman paul, you have the floor. do you trust these men to appeal obama care? >> thank you! >> i thought maybe you were prejudiced against doctors and a doctor that practiced medicine in the military or something. i want to address the question. the gentleman asked whether he thinks we can repeal obama care. theoretically, we can, but the likelihood isn't good. i'm more concerned about a bigger picture of what is happening, that is government involvement in medicine. i had the privilege of practicing medicine in the early '60s when there was no government involvement. with medicare and medicaid coming in, it just expanded. but even when we had the chance to cut back on it when we had a republican congress and a republican president, we gave them prescription drug programs. senator santorum supported it. that's expanding the government. so it's painless, and most of them are bankrupt, prescription drugs, they're not financeable, medicaid is in trouble. so nobody talks about where the money is going to come from. even in my budget proposal which is tough because i'm going to cut a trillion dollars in the first year, but i try to really -- even though these programs should never have started, i want to try to protect the people who are dependent on medical care. now, where does the money come? my suggestion is look at some of the overseas spending we don't need to be doing. we have troops in korea since the korean war, in japan, in germany. and we keep fighting the wars that don't need to be fought. they're undeclared, they never end. newt pointed out world war ii was won in less than four years. nobody says where does the money come? we could work out way out and take care of people with medical needs bought we cant do it with the government taking care of everyone forever. we'll get rid of all of the government programs because we're going bankrupt and our checks are going to bounce and that's going to be a worse problem. >> i'll ask you to stand by. we're going to take a break. one candidate on the stage suggested that two candidates should get out of the race. one listened. we'll get the reaction from the other coming up. also coming up, this just in, while we have been on the air, speaker gingrich has released his tax returns. we'll ask what's in them when we come back. [ todd ] hello? hello todd. just calling to let you know i'm giving you the silent treatment. so you're calling to tell me you're giving me the silent treatment? ummm, yeah. jen, this is like the eighth time you've called... no, it's fine, my family has free unlimited mobile-to-any-mobile minutes. i can call all i want. i don't think you understand how the silent treatment works. hello? [ male announcer ] buy unlimited messaging and get free unlimited calling to any mobile phone on any network. at&t. back in charleston, south carolina, at our southern republican presidential debate. let's get back to questioning the candidates. part of the political conversation in this great state this week, speaker gingrich said he thought it would be preferable if one candidate had a direct campaign against romney. he suggested that perry and santorum should get out of the race. he said, you don't have, quote, any of the knowledge of how to do something on this scale. what do you say to that? >> he handles it very, very well. that's really one of the issues here, folks. a month ago, he was saying it's inevitable i'm going to win the election. i don't want to nomy where i have to worry about what he's going to say next. and that's what i think we're seeing here. for him to suggest that someone who was tied for first and eventually won the iowa caucuses and finished with twice as many votes as he did and finished in front of him in new hampshire despite the fact he spend an enormous amount of money more than i did, and i was ten points behind him and finished ahead of him, and i should get out of the race. these are not cogent thoughts. they aren't. newt's a friend, i love him, but at times you have to have that worrisome moment that something is going to pop, and we can't afford that in a momny. i'm not the most flamboyant, i don't get the biggest applause lines here, but i'm steady, i'm solid. i'm not going to dathings you're worried about. i'm going to make barack obama the issue in this campaign. >> take some time to respond. what did you mean, doesn't have any of the knowledge of how to do something on this scale? >> how big a scale of change do we want in washington? i started working with reagan in 1974. i helped with the development of economics in the '70s, i participated in the '80s in an enormous project of growth, and they created 60 million jobs. i came back, i spent 16 years on a grandiose project called saving the republican majority of the house, 16 years, and most of the republican leaders in the house tlaut the was a joke. even the night before the election, they thought it was a joke. we didn't work for two solid years, 2 out of 3 people were back to work, back to school, we became the first re-elected republican majority since 1928. he then went on to cut taxes for the first time in 16 years. the largest in american history. in the four years i was speaker, the american people created 11 million new jobs, balanced the budget for four consecutive years. i think grandiose thoughts, this is a grandiose country of big people doing big things and we need leadership prepared to take on big projects. >> i will give newt gingrich his due on grandiose ideas and grandiose projects. i will not give him his due on executing those projects which is what the president of the united states is supposed to do. four years into his speakership, he was thrown out by the conservatives, two against him in three. i served with him, i was there, i knew what the problems were in the house of representatives when newt gingrich was leading it. it was an idea a minute. no discipline, no ability to pull things together. i understand you're taking credit for the 1994 election and you had a lot of plans and you know i worked with you on those and we had meetings early in the morning on many a week. we worked together on that, but you have to admit this freshman congressman who wasn't supposed to win a race changed and did something you never did, which is blew the lid off the biggest scandal to hit congress in 50 years. you knew about it for 10 or 15 years because you told me you knew about it. you did nothing because you didn't have the courage to stand up to your own house. they demanded the releasing of the checks that were being kited, risked your promotional career, your ranks and that had as much or more to do with the '94 win as any plan you put together. >> you know, campaigns are interesting experiences for all of us. and each of us has a selective history that fits our history. as a freshman in 1979, i moved to expel a member who was a convicted felon for the first time since 1917. in the page scandal in the 1980s, i moved to expose them, in the late 1980s, i initiated charges against the speaker of the house, jim wright. in 1990, i opposed the president of my own party when he tried to raise taxes, and i fought against that. i think long before rick came to congress, i was busy being a rebel developing a plan to win a majority of the congress. if you talk to anyone who worked at the congressional campaign committee from december of 1978 on, for 16 years, i worked to help create the republican party nationally to become a majority. i worked to create and train the majority. those are historic facts even if they're inconvenient for rick's campaign. >> you're raising the hand. i'll let you in the conversation, but as i do, you put an ad on the air paid for by your campaign calling the speaker an unreliable speaker. why? >> let me go back and address first what you just heard. what you listened to in my view and the speaker's rendition of history going back to 1978 is in my view a perfect example of why we need to send to washington someone who has not lived in washington but someone who has lived in the real streets of america, working in the private sector, who started a business, who helped lead the olympics, who helped lead the state. we need someone outside of washington going to washington. we have three people on the stage, i take that back, we have a doctor who spent most of his team in a surgical suite, in the birthing suite. but i just -- i think america -- i think america has to make a choice as to whether we're going to send people who spent their life in washington run the country or someone who has been a leader in the private sector and knows how the country works. you asked me an entirely different question, but -- >> beats me. i don't know. where are we at, john? >> one of the things i find amusing, listening to how much credit is taken in washington for what goes on in main street. mr. speaker, you can talk about all of the things you did with ronald reagan and the revolution and the jobs created in the reagan years. i looked at the reagan dierary. you're mentioned once. and in the diary, he said you had a idea in a meeting of young congressman, and it wasn't a very good idea and he dismissed it. that's the entire mention. he mentioned george bush 100 times, even mentioned my dad once. there's a sense that washington is pulling the strings in america, but you know what? the free people of america pursuing their dreams and taking risks and working hard, those are the people who make america strong, not washington. >> quickly respond, mr. speaker. >> this is probably a fun difference in our background experience. under jimmy carter, we had the wrong laws, the wrong regulation, the wrong leadership and killed jobs and had inflation. we went to 10.8% unemployment. under reagan, we had the right jobs, right leadership, we had two tex increases, the economy stagnated. when i came back to speaker, we went back to the reagan playbook, more american energy and 11 million jobs showed up. i think government can kill jobs, and i do think government can create the environment where entrepreneurs create jobs, and it was easier for you to do things. you would have been poorer if jimmy carter had remained president. >> you're a speaker four years. i was in business 25 years. so you're not going to get credit for my 25 years, number one. number two, i don't recall a single day saying oh, thank heavens washington is there for me. thank heavens. i said, please get out of my way, let me start a business to put americans to work. >> let me get out of the way for a second and go back to the audience and take a question from an audience member. sir? >> i'm from the great city of charleston. gentlemen, when will you release your tax returns specifically? >> an hour ago. >> mr. speaker posted his online an hour ago. congressman paul, we reached out to your campaign and they said you would not release your returns. why? >> i haven't thought it through, but i would be embarrassed to put my financial statements against their income. i don't have a greatal income. now, i mean, it may come to that, but right now, i have no intention of doing that. with our financial state, i think you know more about me than i know about myself. that's how my wife found out two nights ago about what we were doing. we don't need -- i don't think people need that because nobody is challenging me because i have no conflicts of interesting, and i haven't even talked to obama yet, and i don't make that kind of money. >> governor rumny, when will we see yours? >> when my taxes are complete for this year and i know if i'm a nominee, the president is going to want to insist that i show what my income is this last year. i'll release my returns in april and probably for the other years as well. every time the democrats are out there trying their best to attack people because they have been successful, and i have been successful, but let me tell you, the challenge in america is not people who have been successful. while the price of gasoline has doubled, he said no to the keystone pipeline, and while we have $15 trillion in debt, he said i'm going to put together trillion for obama care. >> some of the questions about when to release your taxes have come from the president and also from the rivals up here. gingrich said you owe them to the people of south carolina before they vote. why shouldn't the people of south carolina see last year's returns? >> because i want to make sure that i beat president obama, and every time we release things drip by drip, the democratses go out with another array of attacks, as has been done in the past, i'll put them out at one time with one discussion of all these. i pay full taxes. i'm honest in my dealings with people. people understand that. my taxes are carefully managed, and i pay a lot of taxes. i have been very successful. when i have our taxes ready for this year, i'll release them. >> is that good enough? >> it's what he has to decide and the people of south carolina are going to decide. if there's anything to help us lose the election, we should know it before the election. and if there's nothing in there, why not release it? he's got to decide. it's his decision. everyone has to run their own campaign. >> i do my own taxes and they're on my computer and i'm not home. when i get home, you'll get my taxes. >> you did call on the governor to release his? >> someone asked would it be okay, i said, yes. i don't think it's a big deal. governor romney knows what his tax rate is. mine is higher than that, but i can't tell you what it is. it's painful writing the check. that's all i can tell you. >> governor romney, you mentioned the democratic attacks. i want to go back in history. back in 1967, your father set a ground-breaking, what was then a ground-breaking standard in american politics. he released his tax returns. he released them not for one year but for 12 years. when he did that, he said one year could be a fluke. perhaps done for show. when you release yours, will you follow your father's example? >> maybe. you know, i don't know how many years i'll release. i'll take a look at what the documents are. and i'll release them, multiple years, i don't know how many, but i'll be happy to do that. there are some who are anxious to see if they can't make it more difficult for a campaign to be successful. democrats want to go after the fact i'm successful. i'm not going to apologize for the fact i'm successful. and i'm not suggesting that these people are doing that, but i know the democrats will go after me on this basis. that's why i want to release them at the same time. my dad, born in mexico, poor, didn't get a college degree. became head of a car company. i could have stayed in detroit like him. i went off on my own. i didn't inherit money from them. what i own, i earned. this is dangerous. we're one nation under god. >> apple products to do my work every day. it employs about 5,000 people in china. base said in the united states, has some people here. 500,000 have been in china. as a president to the united states, what do you do about this? >> i'm the only person on the stage who will do something about it. i've got a specific plan in place that i've put out there called the made in the usa plan for example these kinds of companies. that have created great technology and then go somewhere else to make them. because america is uncompetitive. and that's why we have to cut the corporate tax to zero for all corporations who manufacture and process in this country. people have said, why are you doing it for corporations and only cutting it in half, which i do, to 17.5% for the rest. it's because the local pharmacy's not going to move to china. the jobs we're losing are jobs we have to compete with other countries. and those are manufacturing jobs. the reason they're going there is not because our workers or our management in this country are not productive. we have great productivity gains. it's amazing the transformation that has been made in the last decade or two about our manufacturing processing here. it is simply government getting in the way. none of these folks do anything. i do dramatic things that send a signal. apple, you have all those employees over there. if you want to bring that money back, right now, you pay a 35% tax. under our plan if you bring it back and invest it in plant and equipment here in charleston, you pay nothing. you put that money to work. if you invest it, you pay nothing. it's a powerful incentive. you throw on top of that the energy policies we put out there to revitalize the energy sector. manufacturing, energy cost is a big deal. we have an energy piece. also a piece having to do with regulations. the obama administration has promulgated 2.5 times the number of regulations that cost american businesses over $100 million a year. 2 1/2 times the last 16 years of presidents. this president is putting a burden on manufactures and business. it's the reason we're not making things here. i'll repeal every single one of those regulations on day one. >> congressman paul, how do you revive made in america? >> you have to create the right conditions to bring these companies back and they have to bring their capital back and should be taxed. apple's a great company. the way you asked the question, it infers that because there's a bunch of workers overseas, it hasn't benefited a lot of people here. the consumers obviously have been benefited by a good company well run. but obviously there's a lot of employees with apple in this country as well. i don't think that's the number you have to be concerned about. a lot of people worry about us buying and money going overseas. but if you send money to china, let's say they're paying wages other there and we send dollars over there, they don't put the dollars in a shoe box. they have to spend those dollars. unfortunately, they're buying our debt and perpetuating our consumerism here and our debt here. but immediately, there's a benefit to us because those dollars come back. but also when you get products, if you're buying products cheaper over there, let's say the computer cost $100 instead of $1,000. well, the person's just saved $900. that helps the economy. that $900 stays in that person's pocket. so whether it's shoes or computer. so we shouldn't be frightened about trade or sending money on. but we have to look at the reason why they're doing this. i mean, even the car companies, there's obviously a problem with car companies here. they're in bigger trouble. we had to bail them out. there are foreign companies that build cars in this country and they make a living out of it. so it's more complex than that. but we have to do whatever we can. i think the -- i think the -- the union problem, the right to work states, and of course i've chided senator santorum on this because he has voted, you know, against right to work. but we have to change these conditions to invite people back. but believe me the regulations and the fact that we are the issuer of the reserve currency of the world is a real temporary blessing for us because it's easy for us to export our money. that's unfortunately our greatest export. and they're still taking our money. soon though they're going to quit. and this whole ball game is going to end and we better get prepared for it. [ applause ] >> mention, senator santorum, go ahead, quickly. >> i've already signed a pledge and said i would sign a national right to work bill. when i was a senator from pennsylvania which is a state that is not a right to work state. the state made a decision not to be right to work. i wasn't going to go to washington and overturn that from the federal government and do that to the state. that's a very different position. >> quickly, sir. >> yeah, the response should be, yes, i understand that, that's the way politics worked. you voted the way you thought -- >> representative government works. >> yes, for your state. as president are you going to represent south carolina or pennsylvania? that's really the question. >> well, maybe you didn't hear what i said. i said i would support a national right to work law and sign it into law. and would support it and advocate for one. >> let's continue the economic conversation with some input from a question from twitter. #cnndebate. what is your take on sopa? for those who have not been following it, sopa is the internet piracy act. opponents say it's censorship. our parent company, time warner, says we need a law like this because some of it's products, movies, programming and the like, being ripped off online. let me start with you, mr. speaker. there's two competing ends, two engines even of our economy here. ed an. at odds on this. >> you ask the conservative about the economic interests of hollywood. [ applause ] i'm weighing it. i'm not rushing in. i'm trying to think through all of the many fond left wing people who are so eager to protect. on the other hand, you have virtually everybody who's technologically advanced including google and youtube and facebook and all the folks who say this is going to totally mess up the internet. the bill in its current form is written badly. and leads to a range of censorship that is totally unacceptable. well, i favor freedom. and i think that if you -- if we have a patent office, we have copyrighted law. if a company finds it has genuinely been infringed upon it has the right to sue. but the idea we're going to preemptively have the government start censoring the internet on behalf of giant corporations, economic interests, strikes me as exactly the wrong thing to do. >> mr. speaker, governor romney, these companies complain that their software, that their publishing, their movies, their shows, are being ripped off. >> i think you got it just about right. the truth of the matter is that the law as written is far too intrusive, far too expensive, far too threatening, the freedom of speech and movement of information across the internet. it would have a potentially depressing impact on one of the fastest growing industries in america. which is the internet. at the same time, we care very deeply about intellectual content going across the internet. if we can find a way to very narrowly go after those people who are pirating, we'll do that. a very broad law which gives the government the power to start stepping into the internet and saying who can pass what to whom, i think that's a mistake. i'd say no, i'm standing for freedom. >> it's a big issue in the country right now. congressman paul and senator santorum, your views on this one quickly. >> i was the first republican to sign on with a host of democrats to oppose this law. and we have worked -- we have had a concerted effort. i feel like we're making achievement. this bill is not going to pass. but watch out for the next one. i am pleased that the attitude is sort of mellowed up here. because the republicans unfortunately have been on the wrong side of this issue. this is a good example on why it's good to have somebody that can look at civil liberties and work with coalitions and bring people together. freedom and the constitution bring factions together. i think this is a good example. >> those who support the law, senator, argue tens of thousands of jobs are at stake. >> i don't support this law. i agree everybody with up here, that is goes too far. i will not agree with everybody up here there isn't something that can and should be done to protect the intellectual property rights of people. the internet is not a free zone where anybody can do anything they want to do and trample the rights of other people. and particularly when we're talking about, in this case we're talking about entities offshore that are doing so, that are pirating things. so the idea that the government -- that you have businesses in this country and the government has no role to try to protect the intellectual property of people who have those rights in this country from people overseas pirating them and then selling them back into this country, it's great, i mean, i'm for free, but i'm not for people abusing the law. i think something proper should be done. i agree this goes too far. the idea that, you know, anything goes on the internet, where did that come from? where in america does it say anything goes? we have laws. we respect the law and the rule of law is an important thing and property rights should be respected. >> all right, gentlemen, i want to thank you. audience, applaud if you wish. take one more break. much more of our debate to come including this question, after months of campaigning, if these candidates could do one thing over, what would it be? 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[ male announcer ] want great taste and whole grain oats that can help lower cholesterol? honey nut cheerios. but proven technologies allow natural gas producers to supply affordable, cleaner energy, while protecting our environment. across america, these technologies protect air - by monitoring air quality and reducing emissions... ...protect water - through conservation and self-contained recycling systems... ... and protect land - by reducing our footprint and respecting wildlife. america's natural gas... domestic, abundant, clean energy to power our lives... that's smarter power today. domestic, abundant, clean energy to power our lives... there is a platform built for the purpose of driving innovation. one that's transforming how companies from every industry-- and of every size-- are doing business. a platform built for now. and for what's next. this...is the cisco intelligent network. cisco. welcome back to the southern republican presidential debate. i'm john king. we're live in charleston, south carolina. a lot more issues to wonder through tonight. just want to take this moment, after months and months of campaigning, maybe this is fun, maybe it isn't. speaker gingrich, i want to start with you. you're at this for months and you're out there. if there's one thing, just one thing in this campaign you could do over, what would it be? >> i would skip the opening three months where i hired regular consultants and tried to figure out how to be a normal candidate and just go straight at being a big solutions internet-based campaign from day one. just didn't work. it's not who i am. i'm not capable of being a sort of traditional candidate. very idea-oriented candidate. i think the internet makes it possible to create a momentum of ideas that's very exciting. >> governor romney? >> work to get 25 more votes in iowa, that's for sure. and let's see, i guess -- i guess i also would go back and take every moment i spent talking about one of the guys on the stage and spent that time talking about barack obama. the truth is that barack obama is just way over his head. he's taking our country down a path that is very dangerous. he's making us more and more like a europen social welfare state. he's taking away the rights off our citizens. look, the right course for america is to return to our fundamental principles. i would be talking about that more and probably about my colleagues less because frankly any one of them would be a better president than the one we got. >> senator. >> i thought about that. you know what, i wouldn't change a thing. for me to be standing here in the final four is about as amazing a thing i could ever conceive of happening. someone who had no money. who lost his last race. who everyone basically ignored. as i traveled around south carolina, iowa and new hampshire. and just talked to people. town hall meeting. 700 town hall meetings. just going around. and it proved that good ideas and hard work still pay off in america. and it just was an affirmation to me of the great process we have. >> congressman. >> i can't think of any one thing i would do differently, but i would continue to do what i'm always trying to do. one thing i believe about a free society is it provides the opportunity for us to work for our own virtue and excellence. and in campaigning, i think i can still learn a lot about becoming a better delibber of a message and the conviction i have. i think if i spoke a little slower and maybe more conviction i could do a better job. i think in general i could -- i will continue to work on delivering a message which i think is a great message. >> let's get back to our issues discussion. a question down in our audience. >> i would like to ask the issue of amnesty of the illegal aliens. would you -- how would you secure the american citizens would keep the jobs in line first for them. >> mr. speaker, let's start with you on that. she mentioned the word amnesty. you explained your position in this campaign. as you know, some conservatives have said, no, mr. speaker, you say you can't deport maybe it's 10, 11, some people say as high as 20 million people illegally in this country. as you know, many conservatives say no, that's amnesty, mr. speaker. >> let's start with i think you have to first of all control the border. i don't think you can pass a comprehensive bill because nobody trusts the government. first you control the border. we have a bill that would have it controlled by january 1, 2014. get it build and controlled by 2014. i'm prepared to move up by half the people who work for homeland security. they have 22,000 employees in washington. i'd be prepared to move half of them to texas, arizona, new mexico, if that's what it took to control the border. [ applause ] second, i favor english as the official language of government. i think that creates a continuity. [ applause ] third, i would actually modernize the legal system of visas, because currently we make it too difficult to come here legally and too easy to come here illegally. fourth, i would make it much easier to deport people. so if you were a noncitizen who belonged, say, to ms-13, an el salvadorian gang, we should be able to get rid of you in two weeks, not two years. i favor a guest worker program. i would outsource it to american express, visa or mastercard because they can run it without fraud and the federal government's hopeless. so you want a system that is accurate and that is anti-fraud, which leads you then to be able to say to private employers, if you hire somebody who's illegal, we're going to have an enormous economic sanction, because there will be no excuse once you have a guest worker program that's legal. then you get down to the question of people who are already here. i believe in what i just described most of them will go home. the one group i signaled out -- and we do have a lively debate on this up here. there are people who have been here 25 years. they've been working. they've been paying their bills. they're married. they have children. they may have grandchildren. they may be in your church. now, i don't think we're going to deport grandmothers and grandfathers who have 25 years of networking and relationships in a community. i've suggested a world war ii-style draft board where local citizens would review the applications. you could only apply if you proved that you were financially responsible. you proved you had genuine family ties. and you had an american family sponsor you. you still wouldn't get amnesty. you wouldn't get citizenship. you would get a residency permit. in order to apply for a citizenship, you would have to go back to your own country and get in line behind everybody else and be processed as a person from that country. but i think this is a doable solvable practical solution. and i think trying to deport grandmothers and grandfathers will never pass the congress and would never be accepted by the american people. >> governor romney, is that the doable practical solution? >> you know, the issue of illegal immigration is relatively straight forward compared to the tough issues we face. issues like how we're going to compete with china as it grows its military of extraordinary scale and navy of that scale. how we're going to deal with radical violent jihadists. medicare, medicaid, social security. we've got real challenge, that are tough. this one is not tough. you build a fence. you have enough border patrol agents to secure the fence. you also have a system of giving to people who come here legally an identification card and you expect employers and insist employers check that card before they hire someone. if they don't check the card, if they don't run it through the u.s. database and get an instant response from the government or from mastercard, visa, american express or whomever, those employers are going to get severely sanctioned. if you do that, we solve the problem of illegal immigration. with regards to those who come here illegally now, we're not going to round them all up and deport them but we're not going to give them a preferential pathway to become citizens. they need to go back home, apply for citizenship, apply for permanent residency, like everyone else. coming here illegally should not give you an advantage being able to become a permanent resident of the united states. >> do you have the same view, senator? >> well, i come at it from -- as being the son of an immigrant. my grandfather came to this country and brought my dad when he was 7 years old. that's the story that i love and am familiar with and believe in my heart of hearts that immigration is -- people who want to come to this country and be americans is really the continuing infusion of freedom and enthusiasm for our country. but when you come here illegally, the first act you take is to break our law. that's a different story. two folks here. mitt romney has a position now that people have to go home. now he's changed his position. speaker gingrich believes there needs a legal pathway. again, just like health care, we need a clear contrast. someone who can say, look, i have always been for making sure the law's enforced and enforced fairly. i agree for people who have been here 25 years and maybe have to be separated from their family, if they were picked up and deported, but my father grieved for his father when he came to this country and lived here five years. and other folks who sacrificed. who came here to america. did it the right way according to the law. because america was worth it. and if you want to be an american, the first thing you should do is respect our laws and obey our laws. and the idea that someone who came here and lived here 25 years has only broken one law. if they worked for 25 years, they've been breaking the law for 25 years. if they've been working, they have probably stolen someone's social security number and they've committed social security fraud. this is not just a single occurrence. it's an ongoing issue. if we treat people like that differently than we do with a mother who out of a desperate situation goes out and shoplifts or does something and gets thrown in jail, what are we seeing? we're going to treat people differently? i don't think so. >> you mentioned both governor romney and the speaker -- take a moment quickly. i want to bring congressman paul in the question. >> i ran for president four years ago. this was the position i described when i ran four years ago. wrote a book, laid out my position. i actually agreed i think with what you just said. i believe those people who have come here illegally should not be given a preferential path to become permanent residents or citizens of this country. >> i'll be happy to show you the quotes of what you said. people should have a pathway to citizenship. not citizens, pathway to be legal in this country, not citizenship. >> the pathway i've described is those individuals who have come here illegally should be able to register in this country, have a temporary period to arrange their affairs and return home and get to the back of the line like everyone else. and the position i've had is people who have come here illegally should not be given a preferential pathway relative to others but should be able to get in the same line at the back of the line. i agree with the senator. i'm sorry you don't acknowledge my agreement. but i agree with you. that this is a nation of laws. at the same time, i think it's important. i'm glad you mentioned this. i didn't in my answer. we need to underscore the fact we're a party of legal immigration. we like legal immigration. we want legal immigration. and to protect legal immigration, we want to stop illegal immigration. we don't want to do anything that would suggest to people come on in here, just wait long enough, whether it's five years or ten years. wait long enough and we'll take you all in on an amnesty basis. i want people to get in line legally. >> congressman paul, you're from a border state. if this is a problem, you've heard your colleagues talk about and making sure employers, companies that hire large numbers of people, making sure they get the message. what about individuals? about a quarter of the illegal immigrants in the country work for individuals. if this is a problem, if i hire an illegal immigrant to clean my home, should i be prosecuted for doing that? >> i don't believe you should be. that makes you the policeman, the businessman, if they do anything to help an illegal immigrant, it should be the law enforcers and that is the federal government in charge of immigration. i don't agree with those laws. doesn't mean i'm soft in the issue of illegal immigration. i can't imagine anybody standing up here and saying, oh, i'm for illegal immigration. i think what we fail to do is look at the incentives. it has a lot to do with economics. there's an economic incentives for them to come. there's also an incentive for some of our people in this country not to take a job that's a low-paying job. you're not supposed to say that but that is true. there's also an incentive in the welfare state for immigrants to come in. in texas, we suffer from the fact that there are federal mandates we have to take care of their educational and medical needs and it bankrupts our hospitals. so it's mandates. we need more resources. i find the resources are all overseas. when i was in the military, i was on the pakistan/afghanistan border and that is a no-man's-land. you can't see the border. at least we can see the river south of texas. we know where the rio grande is. we're over there fighting and dying over that border. looking for problems. why don't we quit pretending we can defend those borders and put them on our borders and take care of our needs here? [ cheers and applause ] >> mr. speaker. >> i just think if you're going to raise immigration, i want to make the point from the very first day i'm inaugurated, i will issue an order to the justice department to drop the lawsuits against south carolina, alabama, and arizona. the federal government should enforce the law, not stop states from helping it enforce the law. >> i think we have nodding heads. i assume we have agreement on that. another issue this week. that's the life issue. mr. speaker your campaign sent out a mailing to south carolina republicans across this state. essentially questioning governor romney's commitment on this issue. saying he has changed his position on the abortion issue. if you recall, i moderated a debate back in new hampshire in june. there were seven candidates then. we have four tonight. when they came up, we talked about it briefly. then i asked, is that a fair game, an issue in this campaign, or is it case closed? mr. cain who was with us at the time said case closed. no one else took the opportunity to speak up. if it was case closed then, why is a legitimate issue now? >> you just said nobody else spoke. nobody else said yes it was case closed. the rest of us -- it wasn't a particular issue. wasn't a fight that night. i mean, we were allowed to run our own campaigns, john. it's not an automatic requirement we fit into your debate schedule. this is -- look, this is a very straight forward question. governor romney -- and i accept this. governor romney has said that he had a experience in a lab and became pro-life. i accept that. after he became pro-life, romney care does pay for tax-paid abortions. romney care has written into it planned parenthood. the largest abortion provider in the country. by name. does not have any right to life group written into it. he did appoint pro-abortion judges. and a branch of the government which included his appointees did agree to fund an abortion clinic for planned parent hood. all that occurred after he had become pro-life. now, those are all facts which we validated and essentially that's a legitimate part of the campaign. if you're genuinely pro-life, how come these things are occurring? >> governor romney, he questions whether you're genuinely pro-life. >> i'm not questioned on character and integrity very often. i don't feel like standing here for that but let me clarify the things which are wrong and what the speaker just said. and he can get a scintilla of truth in there to make it seem like this is a significant issue. let's go through one by one. in romney care, there's no mention of abortion whatsoever. the courts in massachusetts, th supreme court, was the body that decided at all times if there was any subsidy of health care in massachusetts that one receive abortion care. that was not done by me. that was done by the courts. it's true, somewhere in that bill of ours, 70 pages, there's the mention of the word planned parenthood. it describes a person at a technical advisory board about payment structures. there's no requirement or no participation of planned parenthood in our health care plan. with regards to judges, i appointed probably 50 or 60 judges at the trial court level mostly. the great majority. these were former prosecutors, 80% of them former prosecutors. we don't have a litmus test for appointing judges. asking them if they're pro-life or not pro-life. these are people going after crimes and the like. i didn't get to appoint any supreme court justices. i am pro-life. and the massachusetts citizens for life and several other family-oriented groups wrote a letter two weeks ago that said they watched my record, i'm an avidly pro-life governor. i'm a pro-life individual. i have to be honest here. it is -- this is not the time to be doubting people's words or questioning their integrity. by the way, is there any possibility i've ever made a mistake in that regard? i didn't see something i should have seen? possibly. you can count on me as president of the united states to pursue a policy that protects the life of unborn, whether here in this country or overseas. i'll reverse the policies of this president. thank you. >> mr. speaker, he says you're questioning his integrity. >> i yield to senator santorum. >> i just want to make out one point. a lot of legislators here in the room and they know this to be the truth. that if you write a piece of legislation and you say medical care and you do not specifically mention that abortion is not covered, we know from every court decision at the state and federal level the federal court and state courts require it. that is something every governor knows, every state length late ur knows. when governor romney did not put that in the bill, you can't say, oh, surprise. he knew very well the court would make them cover abortions. that's number one. number two -- number two, what we're talking about here is someone who's not going to just check the boxes and say, yes, i'm pro-life. we got a lot of folks who just whisper into the microphone that they're pro-life. then you have other people go out and fight the battle and defend life and come out of the trenches and actually work to make sure the dignity of every human life, innocent human life in this country, is protected. and i've done that [ applause ] i would say in contrast with speaker gingrich who on the social issues in particular when he was speaker and even afterwards, they were pushing the back bench. a pledge to america that the congress tried to put together in 2010. i got phone calls ringing off the hook that speaker beginning rich went in and told them keep those out. we need you to come in and help, try to convince these folks to put that back into the pledge. we don't need someone in the back rooms will say social issues are in the front, the back of the bus and come out here and try to pretend they're pro-life. >> governor romney, speaker gingrich, he mentioned you both. please quickly. >> senator, i admire the fact you've been a stalwart defender of pro-life in a state where that's not easy. was also a governor in a state where being pro-life was not easy. i battled hard. what came to my desk was a piece of legislation that said we're going to redefine when life begins. in our state, we said life began at conception. the legislature wanted to change that to say no we're going to do that at implantation. i vetoed that. the legislature also said we want to allow cloning for purposes of creating new embryos of testing. i vetoed that. they didn't want abstinence education. i pursued abstinence education. there was an effort to have a morning after pill provided to young women in their teens. i vetoed that. i stood as a pro-life governor. that's why the massachusetts pro-life family association supported my record as governor, endorsed my record as governor. i did my very best to be a pro-life governor. i will be a pro-life president. i'm proud of that. i wrote about that in my book. my record is solid. i appreciate your record. i hope you'll appreciate mine. >> mr. speaker, he mentioned you specifically. then we want to move on. please respond. >> well, the fact is, i voted with henry hyde, who is the leading pro-life advocate in the house for a generation. the only one we disagreed on was welfare reform which they scored for reasons we never understood. but otherwise was a perfect record on pro-life. when i was speaker, we twice passed a bill that actually rick was active in to end partial birth abortion. twice it was vetoed by clinton but twice we passed it. in the 2010 election, the freshman class has the highest percentage of pro-life members ever in history and my job was to maximize their winning and the fact is we won a huge victory in 2010 with the largest number of pro-life members ever elected in a freshman class. >> all right, let's take another question. i'll bring you in on this one. let's take a question now from social media. question -- before we move on, you want in on this issue? they want you in on this issue. would you like in on this issue? >> john, once again, it's a medical subject. i'm a doctor. no, i do want to make a couple comments because i can remember the very early years studying obstetrics i was told -- it was before the age of abortion. i was told taking care of a woman that's pregnant, you have two patients. i think that solves a lot of the problem about, you know, when life begins and all. [ applause ] i also experienced a time later on in my training in the 1960s when the culture was changing. the vietnam war was going on. the drugs were there. pornography came in and abortion became prevalent even though it was illegal. the morality of the country changed. the law followed up. when morality changed, it reflects on the laws. the law's very important. we should have these laws. law will not correct the basic problem. that's the morality of the people. that we must do. now, just very briefly, i want to talk a little bit about that funding. because the flaw there is if you send funding out, you say, well, you can have it for birth control but not for abortion, all funds are fungible. even funds that go to any hospital, if you say, well, it's not for birth control and it's not for planned parenthood, it's not for abortion, if you send it to the hospital, they can still use that money. this is an indictment of government-run medicine because you never can sort that all out. you need the government out of that business or you will always argue over who's paying what bills. >> very quickly, senator. >> i think that was directed at me. i would just say this, congressman paul has a national right to life voting record of 50%. which is pretty much what harry reid's national right to life voting record is. so for -- to go out and say you're someone who stands up for the right to life, you repeatedly vote against bills on a federal level to promote the right to life. and you say that this is an individual, personal decision or state decision. life should be protected. you should have the willingness to stand up on a federal law and every level of government. what our law protects. that's a federal issue, not a state issue. >> i wasn't thinking about you when i was giving my statements. you are overly sensitive. but it is true that we have a disagreement on how we approach it. i follow what my understanding is of the constitution. and it does allow for the states to deal with difficult problems. matter of fact, it allows the states to deal with almost all the problems. if you look at it. it is not given -- these powers aren't given to the congress. i see abortion as a violent act. all other violence is handled by the states. so don't try to say i'm less pro-life because i want to be particular about the way we do it and allow the states the prerogative. this is the solution. this is the solution. because if we would allow the states to write their laws, take away the jurisdiction by a majority vote in the congress, you repeal roe versus wade overnight, instead of waiting year after year to change the court system. >> all right. we need to take one more break, gentlemen. stand by. less than 35 hours away now from the polling opening in south carolina, a state that is crucial, often decisive, in republican presidential politics. stay with us. hear the candidate's closing arguments to the voters of a state that takes pride in picking presidents. 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[ male announcer ] stop the uh-oh fast with kaopectate. time flies. i wish we could stay all night. i don't suspect you'll have campaigning to do. you know the history of this state. we're inside 35 hours now for voters in south carolina going to the polls. and we all know the history of this state. in modern times, the winning of the south carolina republican primary has gone onto be your party's nominee. we have an interesting race at the moment. senator santorum wins iowa. i want each of you, since we have a short time left, i'll start on the end. congressman paul, make your case. south carolina essentially faces this decision. not so fast? let's continue the ranks or embrace governor romney. make your race in these final hours. >> well, south carolina is known for their respect for liberty. and a lot of people will ask the question -- they will ask the question in a way what will you do for south carolina or what will you do for new hampshire, what will you do for the various states. if you understand liberty, it's equal for everybody. it benefits everybody. if you have a protection on liberty, which is the purpose of the constitution, protection of the individual liberty, that means you protect the private property rights system. if you do that, that benefits everybody. and this is what we have to do is convince people that we can bring people together with the understanding of what those believes were that made america great. it is freedom. it isn't this continued spending money and debt. this is the reason we're in a mountain of debt and we have to deal with it. we really never even got around to talking to that tonight. and one of my very modest proposals, my modest proposal is in the first year, cut a trillion dollars out of the budget to get started because the debt problem is a great burden. it's a burden to all of us, as i mentioned earlier, these programs are going to go down if we don't get our budget under control, we have to be willing to look at overseas spending and all of the entitlement system here in this country. >> mr. speaker? >> well, i want to thank cnn and i want to thank the people of charleston for a very, very interesting and very useful evening. we have a real challenge. it is imperative that we defeat barack obama. this is, i believe, the most dangerous president of our lifetime. and if he is reelected after the disaster he has been, the level of radicalism of his second term will be truly frightening. but in addition to beating obama, we have to have a team victory in the senate and the house. and we have to have a principle victory. so the american people will send a signal that, in january of 2013, they want very dramatic, very deep change in washington. i believe the only way to create the momentum is to be able to overcome his billion dollar campaign with a series of debates which decisively convince the american people that a radical who is incompetent cannot be reelected. and i hope you will vote for me on saturday as the person who can do that. [ cheers and applause ] >> governor romney? >> i agree with a lot of what these last two men said. i believe this is a critical election. i believe the founders took very careful thought in the preparation of the words of our declaration of independence that said that the creator hadd end w endowed us with inalienable rights. this became the place on the planet where we were able to pursue our dreams as we might choose. people came here from all over the world. and that has made us the most powerful economic engine in the world where we can guard freedom because our military is the strongest in the world coming from that powerful economic engine. this president is changing that. he's changing the very nature of america. he's turning us from a merit society, an opportunity society where people are free to choose their own course. but, instead, he's making us an entitlement society where people think they're entitled to what other people have. where the government takes from some and gives to others. that has never been the source of american greatness. we need to return to the principles on which this country was founded. our president said that he wants to fundamentally transform america. he's wrong. we need to restore the values that made america the hope of the earth. and i understand those values. i will do everything in my power to restore those values by keeping america free, by fighting for free enterprise, by standing up to president obama and pointing out how he has made it almost impossible for our private sector to reboot. i will get america working again. i will defeat barack obama and keep america the way it's always been. >> senator santorum? >> i agree with governor romney a hundred percent in what he said about what the mistakes are. the question is who's the best person to take on president obama? i would make the argument that a conviction conservative who has a clear contrast with president obama on the most important issues of the day is the best person. someone who has a clear contrast on health care. a clear contrast on global warming. a clear contrast on the wall street bail out. we'll talk about the one issue that huge issue in the last couple years where government has come in and taken over and both newt and governor romney have supported that. we need someone that not only says now they're going to stand up for conservative principles. the big issues. but someone who has a track record of doing so. and winning. i'm the only one in this race that's ever defeated a democr democratic encouple bat. we're the only people in this race that actually has won a swing state. and i did it because i have a plan like i outlined today. i come from those states. i come from the background. i come with the working class and strong credentials, not just with a plan, but with the character that fits in with exactly the voters we need. those reagan democrats in pennsylvania and ohio and michigan and indiana and wisconsin. those are the votes and those are the states. you want to win? elect someone who can win in the states we have to win and draw the clear contrast with president obama. south carolina, you've been told in the past you've got to settle for a moderate because they can win. and you said when the last time we had a situation like this in 1980,