Barbs Fly as Republican Race Tightens

Republican White House hopefuls Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich traded barbs Thursday on immigration and character ahead of a final debate showdown before Florida's ultra-competitive and all-important primary.

The frontrunners -- locked in a virtual tie in the polls -- spent Wednesday courting Latino voters and sniping at each other as they battled for the chance to take on Democratic President Barack Obama in the November election.

A new CNN poll suggested it was too close to call ahead of next Tuesday's primary, with former Massachusetts governor Romney at 36 percent and former House speaker Gingrich at 34 percent after a series of wild swings.

Trailing them were former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum with 11 percent and Texas congressman Ron Paul at nine percent.

A pro-Romney television spot has been attacking Gingrich for overplaying his links to former president Ronald Reagan, who is beloved by conservatives.

"From debates, you'd think Newt Gingrich was Ronald Reagan's vice president," the narrator says, before concluding: "On leadership and character, Gingrich is no Ronald Reagan."

But Gingrich was unbowed, recounting at a campaign event in Mount Dora on Thursday the story of how he first met Reagan in 1974, riding with him from the airport in Georgia when he was a young candidate for Congress.

"His plane was late. We chatted for a little while. He finally got bored listening to me and said, 'How would you like to see how I give speeches?' I thought, this would be good," he said to polite laughter from the crowd.

"I worked with him as a member of Congress for eight years. In 1995, at the Goldwater Institute, Nancy Reagan said that Ronald Reagan's torch had been passed to me as speaker of the House and that I was carrying out the values that he believed in."

Gingrich has remained on the offensive ahead of the Florida contest, deriding Romney's suggestion that tough government measures could force illegal immigrants to leave the country through "self-deportation."

"For Romney to believe that somebody's grandmother is going to be so cut off that she is going to self-deport, I mean this... is an Obama-level fantasy," he told an event cosponsored by the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce and Univision on Wednesday.

Immigration has been a politically fraught subject for both men.

Conservatives have chastised Gingrich as being too soft on illegal immigrants. Romney has taken heat from Latinos for vowing to veto a popular law that would offer permanent residency to high school graduates and those who serve in the military.

More than 450,000 Hispanics in Florida identify themselves as Republicans, making them a crucial demographic in the January 31 party primary, the latest in a series of state contests to decide the nomination.

Statewide there are 1.4 million registered Hispanic voters, according to Florida election officials, making it key a voting bloc in November.

Sensing a vote winner, Gingrich said he would consider popular Cuban American Florida Senator Marco Rubio as vice president if he won his party's nomination.

And both candidates tried to outdo each other in toughness on Cuba.

With an eye on the state's one million Cuban Americans, both vowed to support a Cuban uprising should it occur while they are in the White House.

"If there was a genuine legitimate uprising, we would, of course, be on the side of the people," Gingrich told Spanish-language network Univision.

"We're very prepared to back people in Libya. We may end up backing people in Syria. But now Cuba? Hands off Cuba? That's baloney. People of Cuba deserve freedom," he said.

Romney, speaking at the Freedom Tower, a memorial to Cuban immigration to the United States, said Obama "does not understand that by helping Castro, he is not helping the people of Cuba; he is hurting them."

Romney said that if he were president he would punish foreign companies doing business in Cuba and "not give Castro gifts."

Obama has eased some travel and other restrictions but has kept the decades-old U.S. embargo in place, saying he is only willing to change the longstanding policy if Cuba's communist regime embarks on democratic reforms.

A poll released Wednesday found that Hispanics in Florida prefer Romney to Gingrich, but that Obama has the edge among the key ethnic group nationally.

Among Latinos who plan to vote in the Republican primary, the poll found Romney had a 15-point advantage over Gingrich, 35 to 20 percent.