SWEETWATER, FLA. — The quarreling between Mitt Romney and John McCain in the closing days of the Florida primary highlights their clash over whether Republicans should make the economy or national security their top priority in choosing a presidential nominee.
The two are battling for the lead in Tuesday's pivotal contest in Florida, the most populous state yet to cast ballots in the Republican race.
In a final set of TV ads, Romney tried to drive home his case that his corporate resume made him best suited to lead an economic recovery, while McCain cast himself as a national security expert fit to be commander in chief.
At dueling campaign stops on the Gulf and Atlantic coasts on Sunday, each resumed slamming the other's record, a measure of how the pair has come to view Florida's primary, if not the nomination race, as a two-man fight.
For his part, Rudolph W. Giuliani, whose presidential bid will probably be doomed if he loses in Florida, tried to remain above the fray. Traveling by bus from Boca Raton to Cocoa Beach, he argued that he could lead on both the economy and national security.
The other major candidate, Mike Huckabee, dashed across the state's northern tier, from Jacksonville to Pensacola. But he signaled his low expectations for Florida by setting off today to campaign in Tennessee, where Republicans will vote Feb. 5.
All the GOP contenders face enormous challenges posed by Florida's diverse patchwork of voting blocs: Cuban Americans in South Florida, evangelicals near the Georgia and Alabama borders, moderates in the suburbs of Orlando, and retirees from the Midwest and Northeast around the state.
Romney took his turn courting Cuban Americans here in the Miami suburbs on Sunday. Trading his usual starched-collar shirt for a white Cuban guayabera, he told a rally of Cuban Americans at a recreation center about his history as a Boston investment executive.
"Business and jobs, it's in my veins," the former governor of Massachusetts said. "I understand how the economy works. I understand why jobs come and why they go. No one needs to give me a briefing on the economy."
Romney was more direct on CNN. Parrying a McCain attack on his Iraq war position, he said McCain was "desperately trying to change the topic from the economy."
"He doesn't want to talk about the economy, because frankly he has pointed out time and again that he doesn't understand how the economy works," Romney said.
