Obama had starring role in GOP debate

President Obama was absent from the Republican presidential debate in Ames, Iowa, last night, but his name was invoked early and often.

The three candidates who took off after the president the most were front-runner Mitt Romney and battling Minnesotans Michele Bachmann and Tim Pawlenty.

Romney cast Obama as "out of his depth" in combating the economy, no doubt a reference to his own experience as a businessman before entering politics. He said the best economic reform would be Obama's defeat in 2012.

Asked if he would have taken the deal Obama reached with Republicans on the debt limit and deficit reduction, Romney said, "I'm not going to eat Barack Obama's dog food, all right? What he served up was not what I would have done if I'd had been president of the United States."

Both Romney and Pawlenty, who was trying to survive the debate amid languishing poll numbers, hit Obama for beginning his Afghanistan troop withdrawal faster than military leaders wanted.



Pawlenty didn't stop there. In one of the debate's more memorable lines, he offered to mow the lawn of any opponent who could name an instance in which Obama had led. He said the president should cancel his upcoming "Cape Cod vacation" and call Congress back to Washington to fix the economy.

The former Minnesota governor also attacked "Obamaneycare," his name for the health care overhaul that Obama borrowed from Romney's predecessor in Massachusetts. And Pawlenty said Obama has been too timid in not calling for Syrian President Bashar Assad's ouster.

"The only headache I hear about on the campaign trail is the headache Barack Obama has given the people of this country with his lousy leadership and this lousy economy," Pawlenty said.

Bachmann mentioned Obama first, attacking his economic record, and said on Saturday voters in the Ames straw poll "get to send a message to Barack Obama. And the message is this: You are finished in 2012, and you will be a one-term president."

She said she's been the "tip of the spear" against "Obamacare," and she said Pawlenty's view on issues such as individual mandates "sounds a lot more like Barack Obama."

The only other candidate who singled out Obama very much was the usually taciturn Jon Huntsman, the former Utah governor who most recently worked for Obama as his man in China.

"The people in this nation know that President Obama has had two-and-a-half years to get it right on the most important issue we face, expanding the economy and creating jobs," Huntsman said. "He's fundamentally failed us."