>> we're live in charleston, south carolina. iowa declares a new winner. rick perry bows out, and 35 hours before the polls open here in south carolina, we have a dead heat. a southern republican presidential debate starts right now. the part of the republican party where tradition lives. >> the strongest military in the world. >> and values matter. >> we want a conservative on the ticket. >> tonight, the republican candidate on stage in south carolina for their final debate before the south primary. mitt romney, the front runner, going for another win. trying to close a deal with skeptical voters. >> work to get good jobs back. >> newt gingrich, armed arrived, trying to harness conservative support as the field gets smaller. >> i am the only candidate capable of stopping a moderate from winning the nomination. >> rick santorum, with renewed momentum, after learning that he won iowa after all. >> we defeated mitt romney in iowa. >> ron paul, the insurgent, a powerful force in the first contest with an army of young voters. >> we are dangerous to the status quo. >> now, south carolina is ready to put its stamp on the 2012 presidential race. >> the president of the united states. >> welcome to charleston and the fight for the south. >> from the north charleston coliseum, this is the southern republican presidential debate. the remaining four candidates are with us. welcome this even. i'm john king. this is the final debate before the presidential primary on saturday. republican leaders here on south carolina, 13 other southern states in the audience along with members of the tea party patriots. some members will get a chance to question the candidates. you can send us your questions online, on twitter, include the hash tag, cnn debate. on facebook, facebook.com/cnnpolitics, and on cnn politics.com. time to meet the contenders. the texas congressman, ron paul. the former speaker of the house, newt gingrich. the former massachusetts governor, mitt romney. and the former senator from and the former senator from pennsylvania, rick santorum. >> ladies and gentlemen, the republican presidential candidate. now, just before we came on the air tonight, we recited the pledge of allegiance. now please rise for the national anthem. we're plezed to have it performed by military cadets from right here in charleston, south carolina. ♪ oh, say can you see by the dawn's early lights ♪ what so proudly we hailed at the twie lites's first gleaming ♪ ♪ with bright stars through the perilous fight oer the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming ♪ ♪ and the rockets' red glare the bombs bursting in air ♪ ♪ gave proof through the night that our flag was still there ♪ ♪ oh say does that star-spangled banner yet wave ♪ ♪ oer the land of the free and the home of the brave ♪ >> that was fabulous. absolutely fabulous. i want to ask the candidates to get comfortable at their podium and i'lltle tell you how the debate is going to work. i'll ask questions and so will members of the audience. we'll try to make sure that each of you get your time. you'll have one minute to answer and 30 seconds for rebuttle. and i'll make sure you get time to response if you're criticized. i'm john king from cnn, i'm rooting for the patriots this weekend, and i'm honored to be your moderator. >> i'm rick santorum and i want to thank the people for their posputality to my wife and our seven children and i want to thank the people of iowa for a delayed but most welcome victory. thank you to the people of iowa. >> i'm mitt romney, good to be back in south carolina. see many good friends here. also good to be here with my wife and some of my kids, married about 42 years, have five sons. five daughter-in-laws 16 grandkids and they're the joy of my life. thank you. >> mr. speaker. >> i i'm newt gingrich, want to thank the people of south carolina for being so hospitable to a georgen. feels good to be back home in the south and i look forward to serving you. >> congressman paul. >> thank you very much. great to be here tonight. i'm a congressman from texas, been elected 12 times, and also i practice ob/gyn for a 30-year period, also served five years in the military and i'm the only u.s. veteran on the stage tonight. >> you have met the candidates. time now to begin the debate, an event that has a dramatically different feel from a few hours ago. romney won the caucuses, there were five podiums on the stage when the sun came up. four now because of rick perry's decision to drop out, and just as speaker gingrich served to contention in south carolina, a fresh character attack on the speaker. i want to start with that this evening. as you know, your ex-wife gave an interview to abc news and the washington post and she said you came to her in 1989 at a time you were having an affair. she said you asked her, sir, to enter into an open marriage. would you like to respond to that? >> no, but i will. i think the destructive, vicious, negative nature of much of the news media makes it harder to govern this country, harder to attract decent people to run for public office, and i'm appalled that you would begin a presidential debate with a topic like that. >> is that all you want to say, sir? >> let me finish, wait. every person in here knows personal things, every person in here has had someone close to them go through painful things. to take an ex-wife and make it two days before the primary, a significant question in the presidential campaign is as close to despicable as anything i can imagine. my two daughters -- my two daughters wrote to the head of abc, and made the point that it was wrong, that they should pull it, and i am frankly astounded that cnn would take trash like that and use it to open a presidential debate. >> as you noted, mr. speaker, the story did not come from our network. it is a subject of conversation in the campaign. i take your point. >> it was repeated by your network, you chose to start the debate with it. don't blame someone else. you and your staff chose to start the debate with it. no, let me be quite clear. let me be quite clear, the story is false, every personal friend who knew us in that period knew the stora was false. we offered several of them to abc to prove it was false. they weren't interested because they want to attack any republican, they're attacking the governor, attacking me. they'll get around to senator santorum and congressman paul. i'm tired of the elite media protected barack obama by attacking the public. >> i noted -- as i noted at the beginning, we have four podiums on the stage tonight and not five. he exited the race this morning, governor perry quickly and forcefully endorsed spiker gingrich, and he said, no he's not a perfect man. he said none of us are, and he said he believes in his christian faith that guides him to the value of redemption. speaker gingrich doesn't believe it's an issue. governor perry doesn't think it's an issue. do you think it is? >> i have answered this question repeatedly throughout the course of the campaign. i am a christian, too, and i thank got for forgiveness, but you know, these are issues of our lives and what we have done in our lives. issues of character for people to consider. the bottom line is those are things for everyone in this audience to look at. and they'll look at me, look at what i have done in my private life and personal life. what i say is this country is a very forgiving country. this country understands that we're all fallen, and i'm hopeful that we will be judged by that standard and not by a higher one on the ultmal day. >> governor romney? >> john, let's get down to the real issues, that's what i have to say. >> congressman? >> i think too often all of us are on the receiver end of attacks from the media. it's very disturbing because sometimes they're not based on facts, and we suffer the consequences. sometimes it reminds me of the idea of getting corporations out of running campaigns, but what about the corporations that run the media? they're always in competition. i think i have a responsibility to sort facts and fiction, that people have to sort this out, but i think setting standards are important and i'm proud that my wife of 54 years is with me tonight. >> as i said at the top of the debate, we'll take some questions from the audience, we have reached out to people online and voters who would like to be there. i want to turn to one of the voters, jane gallagher from south carolina. as everyone in the audience in south carolina knows, we're in a state with 9.9% unemployment. she asked does three or hour specific programs that will put american people back to work. congress paul, do you believe we need specific federal programs to put the american people back to work? >> most of the things the federal government can do to get us back to work is get out of the way. i would like to see the federal government have a sound currency. that creates a healthy economy. i would like to see massive reduction of regulations. i would like to see economic tax reduced to near zero as possible. and that is what we have to do. we have to get the government out of the way. we have to recognize why we have unemployment, and it comes because we have a deeply flawed financial system that causes financial bubbles, the bubbles burst and you have unemployment. the most important thing to get over the hump that was created by bad economic policy is to allow the corrections to occur. you have to get rid of the excessive dent and maladjustment. you don't buy it off the people who were benefitting from it. we the people shouldn't be stuck with the debt. we need to get that behind us. that means the government shouldn't be doing any bail-outs. we need to get the government out of the way and force contract laws and enforce bankruptcy laws. >> mr. speaker, as you can't dress what you would like to do and also the question, do we need federal programs? >> there are three things that could be done, specifically at a south carolina level. one to do at a national level, and that's to reveal the dodd frank bill. that would help overnight. three specifics, one, there's $29 billion of national gas off shore, and louisiana jobs for that production are $80,000 a year. that would help us become energy independent from the middle east, and that could be used to modernize the court of charleston and georgetown. it has to be modernized to meet the larger ships. one of every five jobs in south carolina are dependent on the port of charleston. the third thing frankly is fundamentally radically overhaul the core of engineers, the corps of engineers today takes eight years to complete, doing the port. we won the entire second world war in three years and eight months. >> a subset sof the jobs conversations among the candidates over the past week mr. speaker has been from you and governor perry, sharp criticism of romney's tenure with bain capital. what do you think he did wrong that makes you question his ability to be president. >> there were specific cases, georgetown steel, where bain capital's motto, which is to take over a company and dramatically leverage it, leave it with a great level of debt, makes it harder to supply. he cited his experience as a key part of his preparation for being president. so i think the underlying model of that kind of investment, which is different from venture capitalism, ought to be explained and those cases ought to be looked at. >> let me give you a chance, explain. >> i hope i get a chance to talk about the topic you began with. we'll come back to the direct attack from speaker gingrich. let's talk about first what to to do get the economy going. we have spoken about the tax code cothat is out of alignment with other nations, the fact that the nation is overwhelming us, we need to take care of our energy resources, open the market and track down on china when they cheat. i would like to talk about something else president obama has been doing, practicing crony capitalism. you have to stop the spread of crony capitalism. he gives general motors to the uaw. takes $500 million and sticks it into sulindra they can say no tobying and take care of their friends in the labor movement. he went across the country with regards to the labor industry. he turns down the keystone pipe line which would bring energy and jobs to america. this president is the biggest impediment to job growth in the country, and we have to replace barack obama to get america working again. >> so let's go back -- i'm glad you had that opportunity. i want to go back and see if we can clear it up. the questions about bain, many have been about the number. you said 120,000 jobs that you can tie back to decisions you made at bain capital. take your time and do the math on how you get to 100,000 or 120,000. >> i know we're going to get attacked from the left by barack obama on capitalism. people should say you should only practice it this way or that way and think they know better than the private market. capitalism works, free enterprise works, and i find it kind of strange on a stage like this with republicans having to describe how private equity and venture capital work. let me tell you the answer, we started a number of businesses, four in particular created 120,000 jobs as of today. we started them years ago, they have grown well beyond the time i was there to 120,000 people. there are others we have been with, some of which have lost jobs. people have evaluated that. well, since i ran four years ago, when i ran for governor, and those that have been documented have lost jobs, lost about 10,000 jobs. so 120,000, less 10,000, means we created over 100,000. and there are some, by the way, that were businessed we acquired that grew and became more successful like domino's pizza. i'm proud of the fact that throughout my career, i have worked to try to build enterprises, hopefully to return money to investors. there's nothing wrong with profit. that profit -- that profit went to pension funds, to charities, it went to a wide array of institutions. a lot of people benefits from that, and by the way, as enterprises become more profitable, they can hire more people. i believe in free enterprise. i'm going to stand and defend capitalism throughout the country throughout this campaign. we're going to hit it hard president obama and point it out that it's capitalism and freedom that makes america strong. >> senator santorum, join the conversation, specifically to the initial question from bain, what should the federal government be doing? if you share the speaker's concern about governor romney's tenure at pain? >> i believe in capitalism, too. i believe in capitalism for everybody, not necessarily high finance, but that works for the men and women of the country who are padding alone in america. we have an unemployment rate two and a half times, and the nment party, he wants to make them more empty, give them more food stamps, give them more medicaid. i was talking to an official who was telling me that the state of alabama was fined because they're not signing up enough people for the medicaid program. this is the economy that barack obama has visited on working men and women in the country. it's creating more programs and getting more dependent on the programs. we need a party that doesn't just talk about high finance and cutting the tax rate. we need to talk ability how to put men and women in this country back to work in this country in the manufacturing sector. and -- and there's one candidate that has done that. i have done that. i have done that throughout the course of the campaign. i talked about who we were going to target to make sure we could be competitive. i was up at bmw yesterday. south carolina can compete with anybody in this world in manufacturing. we just need to give them the opportunity to compete, and we're 20% more profitable, our top nine trading partners, and that's including labor costs. we need to cut it down to zero, give manufacturers a leg up to compete for the jobs, half of which, 21% of the jobs in the manufacturing down to 9%, and show we're the party, we're the movement that is going to get the reagan democrats, the conservative democrats all throughout the state that we need to win the election to sign up with us and we'll put them back to work. >> let's stay on the economy and the south carolina experience all of you have had. this is a state incredibly proud of the military tradition and incredibly proud of the veterans. many of the veterans have served post 9/11, served in afghanistan and iraq coming back to a terrible economy. right now, unemployment rate for post 9/11 veterans 18 to 24 is at 22%. congressman paul, to you first, sir, should the federal government be specifically targeting that part. they're saying the unemployment rate is so high that the government should offer tax incentives or take other steps to help them to get jobs. >> to some degree, but you really want to make the environment, the economy healthy for everybody and not designate special places. it is probably necessary on some occasions, but we have to think about how serious our problems are because we face something much, much greater after world war ii, 10 million came home all at once. but what did we do then? there were some of the liberals back then that said we have to have more work programs and this the that, and they thought they would have to do everything to compete for the 10 million. they never got around to it because they came home so quickly. the government cut the budget by 60%, they cut taxes by 30%, by that time, the debt had been liquidated and everybody went back to work again. you didn't need any special programs. so one thing, talking about the military and veterans, i'm very proud that i get twice as many donations from the military people than all of the rest put together. very very concerned about them, where the real problem is that we can create a healthy economic environment if we did the right thing. but where the veterans really deserve help, as a physician and a congressman, is the people who come back and aren't doing well health wise, they need a lot more help. we have an epidemic now of suicide of the military coming back. so they need a lot of medical help, and i think they come off short-changed. they come up short-changed after the vietnam war, persian gulf war, and now. they don't get care. >> i believe we agree there's a generational issue in the country. i want to stay on the economy. senator santorum, you started t shake your head. should the government be stepping in and saying we need to help the group that is hurting, the veterans? >> we have and should continue to have help for the veterans, people who went out and served the country, should have preference of jobs when they come back to work in the economy. my dad and mom worked for the veterans administration, i lived on a va grounds for the first 18 years of my life, and i saw the impact of the vietnam war on the veterans who came back, and they came back very damaged. not just from physical wounds bought a lot of psychological ones and that's a part of the high unemployment rate we're dealing with. we need to be much more aggressive. the president of the united states said he's going to cut veterans benefit, cut the military at a time where they have done five, six, seven tours, coming back, in and out of jobs. sacrificing everything for the country, and the president for the united states can't cut one penny out of the social welfare system and wants to cut a trillion out of the military and hit our veterans, and that's disgusting. >> governor, he makes the case that it is the time, as all of you know, for tough budget decisions. what do you do? >> well, let's distinguish between what gets done at the federal level and the state level. in our state, we fo