Republican candidates clash in \'Tea Party\' debate

Eight candidates hoping to challenge President Barack Obama next year on Monday took the stage at the state fairgrounds in Florida, which has a huge proportion of elderly voters and could be key in the 2012 election.

But the real contest was expected to be between Perry, the Texas governor who shot to the top of Republican polls the moment he entered the race late last month, and former frontrunner Romney, and they did not disappoint.

"Listen, this is a broken system," Perry said, referring to Social Security, most of which goes to payments to US senior citizens.

"It\'s time to have a legitimate conversation" about entitlement reform, he argued.

Romney, a businessman and ex-governor of Massachusetts, slammed Perry for alarming seniors.

"The term Ponzi scheme (used by Perry) is over-the-top," Romney said, arguing that Perry\'s view that Social Security was a "failure" and "unconstitutional" were out of the mainstream.

"It has been called a Ponzi scheme by many people long before me," Perry shot back. "But no one\'s had the courage to stand up and say, here is how we\'re going to reform it."

A poll out Monday by CNN and ORC International showed Perry with a wide lead over Romney, with 30 percent of Americans saying they would support him to be the Republican nominee, compared to 18 percent for Romney.

Asked which candidate has the best chance to defeat Obama, 42 percent of those polled said Perry, and 26 percent chose Romney.

But Romney got an endorsement Monday from Tim Pawlenty, the former Minnesota governor who withdrew from the Republican race last month after a poor showing in an Iowa test vote.

As the largest state to host an early nominating contest for the presidential race, as early as January 31, Florida may well wind up being the turning point in the Republican fight to challenge Obama in November 2012.

"Florida will be the deciding factor in both the Republican primary race and the general election," Javier Manjarres, editor of the Shark Tank, a conservative blog about Florida politics, told AFP.

It is a stronghold of the growing bloc of US Hispanic voters, many of whom want to rein in government spending.

But the retirement-haven state also critically has the highest proportion of elderly voters in the country -- as high as one in three, by some counts -- so Perry will have to tread carefully on Social Security.

The issue is one of several that have pitted Perry against Romney.

The so-called "Tea Party Republican Debate," moderated by CNN, could be considered Round 2 after the rivals clashed over jobs creation and entitlement programs in Perry\'s first presidential debate in Simi Valley, California.

The Romney campaign called Perry "reckless" and "wrong" on his Social Security position, while Perry spokesman Mark Miner shot back, accusing Romney of "scare tactics."

Six others appearing Monday in Florida -- congresswoman Michele Bachmann, businessman Herman Cain, former House speaker Newt Gingrich, former Utah governor Jon Huntsman, Representative Ron Paul and ex-senator Rick Santorum -- will want to flex their political muscle in a bid to remain relevant and revive their stalled campaigns.

Bachmann has slipped to third, but Manjarres isn\'t counting out the Minnesota lawmaker seen as a darling of the Tea Party movement that calls for smaller government and lower taxes.

"While the country focuses on Romney-Perry, Bachmann could very well steal the show, bolstering her status as one of the frontrunners," he said.

Fourteen months before election day, both Democrats and Republicans are gearing up to conquer Florida, a state of 18.8 million people and 29 of the 270 electoral votes a candidate needs to win the White House -- the highest number of some eight to 12 swing states that often decide national elections.

The candidates will likely offer proposals to revive the stalled US economy as well as that of Florida, where unemployment hovers at 10.7 percent, above the national average.

Huntsman, who served as Obama\'s envoy to China -- and whose campaign has barely got traction -- agreed that Florida was "critically important."

"In fact, I do believe that this is where the Republican nominee will be chosen," he told CNN.

The state is eager to move on from the tarnished reputation it earned when it was the scene of a controversial and embarrassing vote re-count following the 2000 presidential election. That re-count was halted by the US Supreme Court, in effect awarding the presidency to George W. Bush over Al Gore.

As a sign of the state\'s growing political sway, the Republican leadership decided to hold its national convention next August in Tampa.

Democrats outnumber Republicans by some 700,000 voters in Florida, but Manjarres said Republicans are a more organized voting bloc and can outnumber their rivals at the polls.

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