DES MOINES, Iowa – With time running short, Republican presidential candidates Rick Santorum, Rick Perry and Newt Gingrich battled Thursday to win over a pivotal crop of undecided conservative voters. Of all the candidates, only Mitt Romney seemed to largely escape attack as he worked to win a state that long seemed out of reach until this week.

“Don’t settle for what’s not good enough to save the country,” the newly ascendant Santorum implored Iowans at City Hall in Coralville. He urged voters to put conservative principles above everything else and suggested that his rivals, specifically Ron Paul, lacked them.

Additional Photos

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich makes a campaign stop Thursday in Storm Lake, Iowa. He announced that he had won the support of Michael Reagan, son of the late President Ronald Reagan. Photos by The Associated Press

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney arrives in Mason City, Iowa. He attracted big crowds at stops in northern and eastern parts of the state.

For the first time, though, the former Pennsylvania senator became a target.

“When he talks about fiscal conservatism, every now and then it leaves me scratching my head because he was a prolific earmarker,” Perry said of Santorum as the day began, referring to special spending projects that members of Congress seek. “He loaded up his bill with Pennsylvania pork.”

Santorum defended the practice as part of lawmakers’ constitutional role as appropriators, telling CNBC that he owed it to Pennsylvanians to bring money to the state. He said earmarks are now being abused and that he would support banning them if he were president.

Perry also jabbed at Santorum in a radio ad and in a new TV commercial that lumps him in with Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann, Gingrich and Paul and says: “The fox guarding the henhouse is like asking a congressman to fix Washington: bad idea.”

The maneuvering underscored the fluid — if not convoluted — state of the GOP presidential race as Tuesday’s caucuses loom while cultural conservatives and evangelical Republicans, who make up the base of the electorate here, continue to be divided. That lack of unity paves the way for someone who is seen as less consistently conservative.

Five days out, public and private polling shows Romney and Paul in strong contention to win the caucuses, with coalitions of support cobbled together from across the Republican political spectrum and their get-out-the-vote operations — beefed up from their 2008 bids — at the ready. They’re the only two with the money and organizations needed to ensure big turnouts Tuesday.

Three others — Santorum, Perry and Gingrich — will have to rely largely on momentum to carry supporters to precinct caucuses. Bachmann, meanwhile, worked to convince backers that her cash-strapped campaign was not in disarray after a top supporter in Iowa abandoned her to back Paul.

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