– The Associated Press

TAMPA, Fla. – Attacked from all sides by fellow Republicans, Texas Gov. Rick Perry softened his rhetoric if not his position on Social Security in a presidential campaign debate Monday night.

He also fended off assaults on his record for creating jobs and requiring the vaccination of schoolgirls against a sexually transmitted virus.

Across a crackling two-hour debate, the front-runner in opinion polls gave little ground and frequently jabbed back, particularly at his chief rival, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney.

But the criticism of Perry kept coming — from Romney on Social Security, from Texas Rep. Ron Paul saying the governor had raised taxes, from Rep. Michele Bachmann and former Sen. Rick Santorum assailing his executive order to require Texas schoolgirls to get an STD vaccine.

It marked the first time in the summer debates that internal Republican differences dominated rather than a common eagerness to unseat Democratic President Barack Obama.

Especially on Social Security.

“A program that’s been there 70 or 80 years, obviously we’re not going to take that away,” Perry said in the debate’s opening moments as Romney pressed him on his earlier statements questioning the constitutionality of Social Security and calling it a Ponzi scheme.

The Texas governor counter-attacked quickly, accusing Romney of “trying to scare seniors” with his own comments on a program that tens of millions of Americans — including millions in the debate state of Florida alone — rely on for part or all of their retirement income.

The eight rivals shared a debate stage for the second time in less than a week, a pace that marked a quickening in the campaign to choose a challenger to President Barack Obama in 2012. The encounter was sponsored by tea party groups — the conservative voters who propelled the GOP to victory in the 2010 congressional elections, and by CNN.

There was no doubt which side the debate audience was on, though. Santorum drew loud applause when he said the current economy “would have to make a dramatic improvement just to be a disaster.”

The debate unfolded in the city where Republicans will gather next summer to bestow the party nomination on a challenger to Obama.

Bachmann said she had “brought the voice of the tea party to the United States Congress as a founder of the tea party caucus.”

Perry said he was glad to be at the debate with the Tea Party Express.

But it soon became clear that the presidential hopefuls were not only eager to court support from the most conservative voters but were anxious not to offend seniors and others who depend on Social Security and Medicare.

None of the three who have gotten the most support so far this year — Perry, Romney and Bachmann — said they favored repealing the prescription drug benefit in Medicare, which has a large unfunded liability.

Paul, asked the same question, turned his answer to a call for ending the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq as ways to save money.

Romney moved aggressively to press Perry on Social Security, saying the front-runner had previously called it a Ponzi scheme, an absolute failure and unconstitutional.

Perry did not dispute the characterization. In his recent book he called the retirement income program an example of a federal initiative that is “violently tossing aside any respect for our founding principles of federalism and limited government.”

Monday night, he said retirees and near-retirees are assured of receiving the benefits they’ve been promised — and should be — but changes are needed to make sure younger workers have any sort of benefit when they near retirement.

Romney wasn’t satisfied with that, quoting others as saying the Texas governor’s position on Social Security could spell defeat for the party as it tries to win the White House from Obama next year. Repeatedly, he pressed Perry to say whether he believes the program is unconstitutional. Just as insistently, Perry ducked.

Bachmann and Santorum were the aggressors when the topic turned to an executive order Perry signed in 2007 requiring the vaccination of Texas schoolgirls against STD.

Bachmann, whose candidacy surged and then fell back in the polls in less than a month, said that “to have innocent little 12-year-old girls be forced to have a government injection through an executive order is just flat out wrong. That should never be done. It’s a violation of a liberty interest.”

Perry said, as he has before, that it was a mistake to issue an executive order on the issue, but he defended wanting to have the vaccinations take effect.

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