The debate was the opening act for Saturday's Iowa straw poll, a traditional test of campaign strength in the state that holds the first presidential nominating contest in 2012.
But the debate and straw poll were overshadowed by Texas Governor Rick Perry's plan to enter the race on Saturday, a move that could vault him into the top tier of contenders next to front-runner Mitt Romney and dramatically reshape the race.
The candidates all welcomed Perry to the race but had little to say about his candidacy. A staunch social and religious conservative, Perry also has a strong job creation record that could challenge Romney's support among the party's pro-business wing.
The debate was the debut on the national stage of former Utah Governor Jon Huntsman, who defended his time as the U.S. ambassador to China under Obama and laid out his platform.
"Here's what I intend to do: I intend to do exactly what I did as governor of the state of Utah -- we took a good state and we made it number one in this country in terms of job creation. If you want to know what I'm going to do, I'm going to do exactly what I did as governor. It's called leadership," said Huntsman as way of introduction.
"It's called looking at how the free-market system works, It's creating a competitive environment that speaks to growth."
Romney set the tone early in the debate with his comments on the Obama administration.
"Look, I'm not going to eat Barack Obama's dogfood, alright? What he served up was not what I would have done, if I'd a been President of the United States," said Romney, attacking how President Barack Obama handled the debt-ceiling crisis.
"If I were president, what I would have done is cut federal spending, cap federal spending as a percentage of the total economy, and then worked for a balanced budget amendment. If we do that, then we can reign back the scale of government, and that's the right thing to do," added the former governor of Massachussetts.
All of the contenders battered Obama's leadership after last week's downgrade of the U.S. credit rating and days of wild mood swings on Wall Street.
"I think this 'Super Committee' is about as dumb an idea as Washington has come up with in my lifetime. I mean, if you will for a second, I mean I used to run the House of Representatives, I have some general notion of these things," condemned former U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Newt Gingrich.
"The idea that 523 Senators and Congressmen are going to sit around for four months, while twelve 'brilliant' people -- mostly picked for political reasons -- are going to sit in some room and brilliantly come up with a trillion dollars or force up to choose between gutting our military and accepting a tax increase is irrational. They're going to walk in just before Thanksgiving and say 'alright, we can shoot you in the head or cut off your right leg, which do you prefer?'" he said.
"Where's Barack Obama on these issues? You can't find his plans on some of the most pressing financial issues of our country. For example, where's Barack Obama's on Social Security reform, Medicare reform, Medicaid reform," challenged Pawlenty.
"In fact I'll offer a prize tonight to anybody in this auditorium or anyone watching on television, if you can find Barack Obama's specific plan on any of those items, I will come to your house and cook you dinner," the former governor of Minnesota said.
In Iowa, Pawlenty is desperately seeking to gain ground on Bachmann, a conservative and Tea Party favorite who leads polls in the state. The two Minnesotans, however were the sideshow, as top contenders Romney and Huntsman eased through the debate. Pawlenty, who has been criticized for being too nice, was notably more aggressive than he has been on the campaign trail and in other debates, as he frequently challenged Bachmann on her record.
"When it came to cap and trade, I fought it with everything that was in me, including I introduced the 'Lightbulb Freedom of Choice Act', so people could all purchase the lightbulb of their choice. I also believe that big government is hurting the United States, we need to have small government," retorted the Congresswoman.
The repeated clashes between the two contenders caused former Senator Rick Santorum to interrupt and beg moderators of the debate to ask him a question, but he remained relatively sidelined, along with Congressman Ron Paul and Georgia businessman Herman Cain.
"America has got to learn how to take a joke," said Cain as he defended a statement on immigration earlier on the campaign trail. The comment elicited a huge roar of approval from the crowd in the auditorium at Iowa State University.
The timing of the debate two days before the straw poll raised the stakes for several trailing candidates, most notably Pawlenty, who could be fighting for his political life in the nonbinding mock election.
Sent from my BlackBerry® smartphone provided by Airtel Nigeria.
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