Differences emerge as Republicans debate

Sharing a stage for the first time, the 10 Republican presidential hopefuls alternated between tough talk and optimism Thursday night as they wrapped themselves in the conservative mantle of the party’s patron saint and their spiritual host, Ronald Reagan.

Invoking the name of the nation’s 40th president nearly 20 times -- and mostly ignoring the current occupant of the White House -- the contestants repeatedly faulted the direction of Washington under GOP rule, and promised change.

“On the issue of why we lost the election in 2006, it’s because we did lose our way,” said Sen. John McCain of Arizona. “We began to value principle over power, and spending got out of control.”

“We went to Washington to change Washington -- Washington changed us,” said former Wisconsin Gov. Tommy G. Thompson. “We forgot to come up with new ideas, big ideas like Ronald Reagan.”

The format of the 90-minute debate, held at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library on a brown bluff overlooking Simi Valley and attended by Reagan’s widow, Nancy, tended to limit interaction among the candidates.

Still, they managed to spell out their differences on a variety of issues, including abortion, stem cell research and congressional intervention in the Terri Schiavo right-to-die case.

One of the sharpest exchanges occurred early on, when moderator Chris Matthews of MSNBC quoted from a recent interview in which former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney stated that it was “not worth moving heaven and Earth, spending billions of dollars” to capture Osama bin Laden.

Romney backpedaled somewhat. “Of course [we’ll] get Osama bin Laden and track him wherever he has to go, and make sure he pays for the outrage he exacted upon America,” Romney said.

“Can we move heaven and Earth to do it?” Matthews interrupted.

“We’ll move everything to get him. But I don’t want to buy into the Democratic pitch that this is all about one person -- Osama bin Laden -- because after we get him, there’s going to be another and another,” Romney said.

McCain, who previously called Romney’s statement naive, responded vigorously. “We will track him down,” McCain said. “We will capture him. We will bring him to justice, and I will follow him to the gates of hell.”

Another area of disagreement was abortion. Asked whether overturning Roe vs. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion, would make for a good day in America, several candidates responded in the affirmative.

Rep. Tom Tancredo of Colorado said it would be “the greatest day” in the country’s history, and former Virginia Gov. Jim Gilmore said the case was “wrongly decided.”

Former New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, who supports legalized abortion, effectively shrugged.

“It would be OK to repeal,” he said. “It would also be OK if a strict constructionist judge viewed it as a precedent, and I think a judge has to make that decision. We’re a federalist system of government, and states can make their own decision.”

Romney, asked to defend his shifting position on abortion rights from support to opposition as he undertook his presidential bid, cited Reagan and President George H.W. Bush among others who had changed their views over time.

“I said I was wrong ... and I won’t apologize to anybody for becoming pro-life,” Romney said.

Questions of life and its preservation drew the evening’s most clear-cut lines of division. McCain and Giuliani were the only candidates to support increased federal funding for embryonic stem cell research.

Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas offered his opposition “with all due respect to Mrs. Reagan,” who was seated in the front row and has been a vocal proponent of greater funding. “It’s not necessary to kill a human life for us to heal people,” Brownback said.

McCain and Romney split with others on the Schiavo case and the pitched legal battle to continue her medical treatment over the objection of her husband.

The three said it was a mistake for Congress to intervene, though Romney said the Florida lawmakers acted appropriately; the rest supported congressional involvement.

“When there’s a question, err on the side of life,” said Rep. Duncan Hunter of El Cajon. “I think Congress did the right thing.”

There was little disagreement over the war in Iraq, save from Rep. Ron Paul of Texas, who voted against authorizing the invasion.

Paul responded to a question about the conviction of I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby by saying the former aide to Vice President Dick Cheney did not deserve a presidential pardon. “He was instrumental in the misinformation that led the Congress and the people to support a war that we didn’t need to be in,” Paul said.

McCain suggested several times that the war had been mismanaged by the Bush administration, but said with “a new strategy” in place there was renewed hope for success. “We must win in Iraq,” he said. “If we withdraw there will be chaos. There will be genocide. And they” -- referring to the United States’ enemies -- “will follow us home.”

Romney and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee agreed that a precipitous withdrawal could produce chaos throughout the region and the rest of the world. “It’s important that we finish the job, that we do it right, rather than have to go back and someday do it over,” Huckabee said.

The discussion of the war reflected the precarious position facing the 10 men as they stood on stage, wearing matching black suits and arrayed beneath the Boeing 707 that served as Air Force One for Reagan and six other presidents.

They were careful not to attack President Bush by name; indeed, the first direct mention of the president came near the end of the evening.

Huckabee even passed when asked to give a letter grade on the president’s handling of Iraq. “We’re still in the middle of the exam,” Huckabee said. “Let’s wait and see how it turns out. Then we can give the president a grade.”

By the same token, each candidate was eager to offer himself as an agent of change at a time when polls find a substantial majority of Americans unhappy with the direction of the country. Their solution was to look ahead by looking backward to the Reagan years and the fond memories that shroud the late president.

“Ronald Reagan had an optimism and a belief that America could be stronger and better tomorrow than it is today,” Thompson said in one of the night’s several tributes. “He instilled that and inculcated that in every American. That’s what we will have to do as a party again.”

Giuliani, asked about his greatest weakness as a candidate, instead talked about Reagan, saying they shared a glass-half-full look at life. “The only way I could turn around a city like New York that was considered the crime capital of America and turn it into the safest large city in America is to kind of inculcate some of that Ronald Reagan optimism,” Giuliani said.

It was only in the final three minutes of the debate, when each candidate was asked how he would be different from Bush, that Romney and Giuliani rose in his defense.

Romney said he respected the president’s character and passion and argued that everything Bush had done since Sept. 11 “flows from the desire to protect the American people and make our future secure.”

Giuliani gave Bush credit for preventing another terrorist attack, saying the president “made the right decision ... to put us on offense against terrorists. I think history will remember him for that, and I think we as Republicans should remind people of that.”

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mark.barabak@latimes.com

maeve.reston@latimes.com

Times staff writer Scott Martelle contributed to this report.