GOP debate: Candidates recount campaign regrets

By Jonathan Easley - 01/19/12 10:46 PM ET

The four remaining GOP presidential candidates were asked at Thursday’s debate how they would have run their campaigns differently in hindsight.

The answers alternated between serious and humorous.

“I would skip the opening three months where I hired regular consultants and tried to be a normal candidate,” Newt Gingrich said. “And just go straight to being a big ideas big solutions internet-based campaign from day one. It just didn’t work, it’s not who I am, I’m not capable of being a traditional candidate.”

Gingrich’s campaign was almost sunk at the beginning when a large portion of his campaign staff resigned after accusing him of not taking the campaign seriously. He also rapidly ran through his fundraising.

“I’d have worked to get 25 more votes in Iowa, that’s for sure,” Mitt Rommey said.

But there was confusion as to whether Romney actually meant 35 votes. On Thursday the Iowa Republican party reversed his eight-vote victory in the Iowa caucuses, saying a recount showed that Rick Santorum won by 34 votes.

The 25 votes Romney stated still wouldn't give him the win.

The former Massachusetts governor's campaign has tried to diminish the importance of the recount in hopes that it doesn’t alter the narrative of an inevitable Romney nomination.

Romney also said that he would have spent less time talking about the other Republican candidates, and talked more about the deficiencies of President Obama.

Santorum said he wouldn’t change anything.

“For me to be standing here in the final four is about as amazing a thing as I could ever have conceived of happening,” he said. “Someone who had no money, who lost his last race, who everyone basically ignored as I travelled around South Carolina, Iowa and New Hampshire, and just talked to people – 700 town hall meetings. And it proved that good ideas and hard work still pay off in America.”

Ron Paul, who is sometimes criticized for getting lost in the minutia of his nuanced stances on economics and foreign policy, said he could learn to be a better deliverer of his message.

“I think that if I spoke a littler slower and with more conviction that I could do a better job,” he said. “I think it’s a great message.”