GOP field focuses heat on Romney as N.H. looms

As the Republican presidential race heads into New Hampshire for Tuesday's primary, frontrunner Mitt Romney's rivals continue to batter the former Massachusetts governor as a rich and ruthless businessman.

"Those of us who believe in free markets would find it pretty hard to justify rich people figuring out pretty clever ways to loot a company, leaving behind 1,700 families without a job," Newt Gingrich told reporters Sunday.

Romney has deflected most of the blows but his support in New Hampshire, where he has enjoyed a healthy lead, has slipped slightly. In a recent Suffolk University poll, Romney was down four points to 35 percent, but that still put him 15 points ahead of Ron Paul.

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Romney remains the frontrunner nationally as well. In the latest CBS News poll, released Monday, Romney leads Gingrich 19 percent to 15 percent. Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum surged to third with 14 percent off of his strong showing in the Iowa caucuses.

Romney is also widely seen as the safest bet in the general election - with 55 percent of Republican primary voters seeing him as the best candidate to beat President Barack Obama.

But as CBS News political correspondent Jan Crawford notes, New Hampshire voters are can be unpredictable - on the eve of the 2008 Democratic primary, then-Sen. Obama led Hillary Clinton by 13 points, only to lose that contest to his future secretary of state.