GOP base scatters to rival camps

"It's still valid," Huckabee said. "Enough is enough of the negative campaigning. . . . The Tonya Harding school of politics has to stop."

Romney sought to keep the issue alive.

"It does remind you a bit of a person who stands up and says, 'I'm not going to call my opponent any names, but here are the names I'd call him if I were going to call him names,' " Romney said. "What he did yesterday didn't fool the media, and I don't think it will fool the people of Iowa either."

The splintering in the GOP field has occurred in part because voters have come to believe that the leading candidates each have a different strength, the Times/Bloomberg poll found, with no one candidate dominating on a wide range of leadership qualities.

Romney was seen in the poll as best equipped to handle economic issues. Huckabee was strong on social issues in Iowa -- but not in New Hampshire, where the moderate wing of the party is stronger. McCain is seen as the best equipped to handle foreign affairs.

Among Democrats, by contrast, a single candidate -- Hillary Rodham Clinton -- dominated in all those policy areas, the poll found.

Ken Khachigian, a California-based GOP political strategist, sees the intraparty fragmentation as a reflection, in part, of modern politics' tendency to focus on narrow constituencies rather than big-picture themes the way Reagan did.

"He understood the poetry of politics," Khachigian said. "That's the big difference this year -- we are losing the poetry for narrowcasting."

Khachigian and other Republicans argue that in the end, Clinton may prove the great unifier of the GOP. If she wins the Democratic nomination, they say, Republicans of all stripes will rally in their shared loathing of her.

"Hillary, for Republicans, is the gift that keeps on giving," said Dirk Van Dongen, a business lobbyist who supports Giuliani.

But an effort built around beating Clinton would not amount to the kind of grand, idea-driven campaign that conservatives aspire to, Newhouse said. "That would be for winning an election, not for maintaining a governing majority."

janet.hook@latimes.com

michael.finnegan@latimes.com

Times staff writers Joe Mathews and Scott Martelle contributed to this report.