Romney criticized Newt and Santorum, saying they spent their careers in government. Romney engages Newt, Santorum

ATLANTIC, Iowa — Mitt Romney mixed it up with his GOP rivals here Sunday, returning fire at two two of his top opponents just two days out from Tuesday’s caucuses.

Romney, who for the most part has avoided engaging with his GOP opponents in the race, took aim at the surging Rick Santorum and fading Newt Gingrich, who’s dropped to fourth in polls.


“Like Speaker Gingrich, Senator Santorum has spent his career in government, in Washington — nothing wrong with that, but it’s a very different background than I have,” the former Massachusetts governor said at an event here. “It would be helpful to understand the economy firsthand.”

That’s the argument Romney returned to as he brushed back Santorum’s comments earlier in the day that he wasn’t a full-fledged conservative.

“I’m a conservative, I’m proud to be a conservative businessman and what distinguishes me I think from the others in the field is that I understand the economy firsthand having lived it,” Romney told reporters here.

Romney’s been running stronger than expected in Iowa in the final weeks before voting begins, taking the top spot again in the latest poll of the state, released Saturday night by the Des Moines Register. A Romney win here would give him a leg-up in the nomination fight, which goes next to Romney-friendly turf in New Hampshire, just one week after the caucuses.

Though Santorum, Gingrich and Romney’s other opponents have pledged to keep their campaigns going no matter Tuesday’s results, a 2-0 Romney record in the early contests would make him harder to stop as the race then turns to South Carolina on Jan. 21.

Santorum wasn’t the only one dinging Romney.

Leaving his pledge of a positive campaign behind, Gingrich pressed a tough line of attack that portrayed the former Massachusetts governor as soft on abortion — a major vulnerability for the frontrunner that hadn’t been raised directly by any of his opponents.

“I think New Hampshire is the perfect state to have a debate over Romneycare and to have a debate about tax-paid abortions, which he signed, and to have a debate about putting Planned Parenthood on a government board, which he signed, and to have a debate about appointing liberal judges, which he did,” said Gingrich, starting in Marshalltown, Iowa, the case he’ll take to the Granite State and beyond to the more conservative primary electorate in South Carolina.

Gingrich said he was going to change his approach, stepping up his argument against Romney in his ads and retail appearances “because I think if you have somebody spend three-and-half million dollars lying about you, you have some obligation to come back and set the record straight.”

Gingrich also kept up his attacks on the frontrunner’s negative advertising, charging on his way out from church in Des Moines Sunday morning that “Romney would buy the election if he could.”

Gingrich returned to the thought that afternoon in Marshalltown, answering a reporter’s question about whether he feel swift-voted to quip, “No, I feel Romney-voted.”

But, Gingrich added, Romney “has not broken out despite spending millions of dollars.”

Contrasting himself to the field earlier at the event, Gingrich said, “If you are willing to be dishonest to get to Washington, why would you believe you’d be honest once you got there?”

Paul, who was absent from the trail Sunday as he spent the weekend back home in Texas, launched his own attacks on Santorum earlier in the day, using the Sunday news shows to dismiss Santorum’s supporters as not being strongly devoted to him. Paul’s son, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, said there was reason to doubt the former Pennsylvania’s commitments to conservative politics and low government spending.

But Santorum said he was ready for the onslaught that comes with rising in the polls.

“The good thing about this is this isn’t my first rodeo,” Santorum told more than 100 supporters squeezed into a Sioux City coffee house. “I’ve been in tough races. I’ve had the national media crawling up anywhere they can crawl. I know what it’s like. My wife and I and our kids, we’ve talked about this. This is not going to be fun.”

But he had his own tough words for other GOP rivals as well.

Amid growing calls for the social conservative voters to coalesce behind one candidate, Santorum responded to negative attention from Rick Perry by mocking the Texas governor’s famous “oops” moment from a November debate. Santorum said he’d prayed for Perry during a later debate, seeing the governor in danger of another “oops.”

Santorum also swiped at Paul, saying the Texas congressman and President Barack Obama’s foreign policy were one and the same.

Michele Bachmann, meanwhile, blasted Paul as “dangerous” on national security.

Meanwhile, in Oskaloosa, about an hour outside Des Moines, Michele Bachmann read scripture to the congregation at the Jubilee Family Church, and insisted to reporters afterward that she is seeing momentum — despite a less-than-packed house at the church, and a schedule that’s seen small crowds over her last week.

“I’m not a politician, I’m not an establishment person,” she said. “I’m a real, authentic Iowan…people are very independent here, and they will make that decision.”

Bachmann quoted Margaret Thatcher at another point as a comparison to her own effort to salvage her candidacy by making the case that she’s the only consistent social conservative in the race.

“Margaret Thatcher said, ‘I’m not for turning.’ And what that meant was when she went in as prime minister she would be the same person [that] she was before.”

Asked about reports that Rep. Steve King might endorse either Mitt Romney or Rick Santorum, she said it’s not clear who he’ll endorse but added, “The main endorsement that we’re looking at is that of Iowans on Jan. 3. And that’s what we have done. I’ve been all across this state to meet as many Iowans as I can…that’s the endorsement that I’m looking for on Tuesday night, for Iowans in the Iowa caucuses.”

Maggie Haberman, Jonathan Martin, Juana Summers and Charles Mathesian contributed reporting to this report.