MIAMI - Newt Gingrich slammed Republican presidential rival Mitt Romney for "carpet-bombing" his record and derided him as a "liberal" ahead of Tuesday's pivotal presidential primary in Florida, trying to cut into the resurgent front-runner's lead in the final hours before the vote.
On the defensive after a barrage of attacks from Romney and a political committee that supports him, Gingrich said Romney had lied and the Republican Party establishment had allowed it.
"I don't know how you debate a person with civility if they're prepared to say things that are just plain factually false," Gingrich said during appearances on Sunday TV talk shows. "I think the Republican establishment believes it's OK to say and do virtually anything to stop a genuine insurgency from winning because they are very afraid of losing control of the old order."
The Florida contest has become decidedly bitter and personal with Gingrich casting himself as the insurgent candidate against Romney, the party establishment's favourite. Romney and Gingrich have tangled over policy and character since Gingrich's stunning victory over the well-funded Romney in the South Carolina primary on Jan. 21.
Gingrich has been under heavy attack from Romney and allies of the former Massachusetts governor. Romney had spent the past several days, including during two Florida debates, sharply criticizing Gingrich's discipline, temperament and ethics during and after his time as the speaker of the House of Representatives in the 1990s.
On Sunday, Gingrich objected to a Romney campaign ad that includes a 1997 NBC News report on the House's decision to discipline the then-House speaker for ethics charges.
"It's only when he can mass money to focus on carpet-bombing with negative ads that he gains any traction at all," Gingrich said.
Gingrich acknowledged the possibility that he could lose in Florida and pledged to compete with Romney all the way to the party's national convention in late August.
An NBC/Marist poll showed Romney with support from 42 per cent of likely Florida Republican primary voters and Gingrich slipping to 27 per cent.
While Romney had spent the past several days sharply attacking Gingrich, he pivoted over the weekend to refocus his criticism toward President Barack Obama, calling the Democratic incumbent "detached from reality." The former Massachusetts governor criticized Obama's plan to cut the size of the military and said the administration had a weak foreign policy.
Gingrich's South Carolina momentum has largely evaporated amid the pounding he has sustained from Romney's campaign and the pro-Romney group called Restore Our Future. They have spent some $6.8 million in ads criticizing Gingrich in the Florida campaign's final week.
By contrast, Gingrich was spending about $700,000, and Winning Our Future, a group backing him, an additional $1.5 million. That was about one-third the amount for the pro-Romney tandem.
Gingrich had been labeling Romney a "Massachusetts moderate." Now Gingrich has stepped up the criticism by adding the liberal tag to his criticism of Romney. Outside a church in the Florida town of Lutz on Sunday morning, Gingrich called Romney a "pro-abortion, pro-gun control, pro-tax increase liberal."
Gingrich was trying to raise doubts about Romney's conservative credentials by pointing to more moderate positions the former governor took towards gay and abortion rights and gun control as a politician in Democratic-leaning Massachusetts.
Gingrich planned to campaign Sunday in central Florida, while Romney scheduled rallies in the south. Romney was also looking ahead to the Nevada caucuses on Feb. 4, airing ads in that state and citing the endorsement Sunday of the Las Vegas Review-Journal, Nevada's largest newspaper.
Gingrich collected the weekend endorsement of Herman Cain, a favourite of the small government, anti-tax tea party movement and former presidential hopeful whose White House effort foundered amid sexual harassment allegations.
Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, trailing in Florida by a wide margin despite his appeals to social conservatives, planned to remain in Pennsylvania where his 3-year-old daughter, Bella, was hospitalized, and resume campaigning as soon as possible, according to his campaign. She has a genetic condition caused by the presence of all or part of an extra 18th chromosome.
Texas Rep. Ron Paul has invested little in the Florida race and is looking ahead to next month's caucuses in Maine, Nevada and other states. The libertarian-leaning Paul is focusing more on gathering delegates in caucus states, where it's less expensive to campaign. But securing the nomination only through caucus states is a hard task.
Gingrich appeared on "Fox News Sunday" and ABC's "This Week." Paul was on CNN's "State of the Union."
