St. Petersburg, FL

The Romney- Rudy face off continued in Florida today. The past few days have been full of back and forth between the two Republican rivals and today was no different. Yesterday, Mayor Giuliani told Fox News’ Carl Cameron that Romney was running away from his record. Today Governor Romney responded, 
”I’m very proud of my record and as you can probably tell here today I basically talk about my record everywhere I go. I’m very proud of our health care system that we were able to improve in Massachusetts. I’m proud of the fact that I turned in a 2 billion dollar rainy day fund at the end of my term in office. He turned in a 3 billion dollar budget gap. . . What Peter says about Paul usually tells you more about Peter than Paul. So I’ll be talking about my record and I get a good chance to do that pretty regularly.”

Romney toured a children’s hospital today in Florida and afterwards held a health care forum. At a press conference, he answered questions about Rudy’s attacks and counterattacks on Romney’s record and policies. The former Massachusetts Governor said 
”I think Mayor Giuliani has a fact problem meaning that he makes them up.”

Over the past few weeks, but especially over the last few days Romney has been trying to compare Giuliani to Senator Clinton; trying to peg them as having similar policies. That was no different today even saying that Rudy supported Clinton’s health care plan in 1994, “When it first came out he was all roses and petals for Hillary’s plan. All full of praise.” The campaign sent out an e-mail today backing that statement up citing the New York Times; “In 1994, Mr. Giuliani. . .saluted the Clinton health care plan as ‘doing some pretty good things’ and boasted that New York offered’ universal health care.’

The Giuliani campaign has not responded to those charges yet.

All the Republican candidates are either in Florida or on their way for tomorrow’s debate in St. Petersburg. Will it be a Romney-Rudy Slugfest? We will have to wait and see! Keep checking back for updates.