MANCHESTER, N.H. – Mitt Romney coolly defended his solid New Hampshire lead Saturday night in a high-stakes debate, while his rivals took aim at each other as they each struggled to emerge as Romney's main challenger.

The six candidates fought, sometimes bitterly, over leadership qualities, job creation, military backgrounds and a host of other issues three days before the nation's first presidential primary here.

Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts who leads in New Hampshire polls, defended his role as a businessman and emerged from the debate largely unscathed. His opponents mostly fired at each other, not him, and he concentrated his criticism on Barack Obama, cultivating his camp's contention that their candidate is the Republican most able to defeat the Democratic incumbent.

Former Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, who surged into a virtual tie with Romney in Tuesday's Iowa caucuses, cited his record of working in Congress on issues such as Iran, saying it was a better model for presidential leadership than Romney's record as a private-equity capitalist.

"Business experience doesn't necessarily match up with being the commander in chief," Santorum said. "The commander in chief of this country isn't a CEO."

Romney, co-founder of the Bain Capital investment firm, responded firmly and deliberately.

"People who spend a lot of time in Washington don't understand what happens in the real economy," he said. "They think people who start businesses are just managers. … Those people are leaders. My experience is in leadership."

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich also went after Romney's record at Bain, a firm that invested in other businesses, sometimes forcing job layoffs.

"I'm not nearly as enamored of a Wall Street model where you can flip companies, you can go in and have leveraged buyouts, you can basically take out all the money, leaving behind the worker," Gingrich said.

"It always pained me" to downsize a business to make it financially successful, Romney said. But overall, he added, the businesses his firm invested in "have now added more than 100,000 jobs."

Co-sponsored by Yahoo News and televised on ABC from Saint Anselm College, the two-hour debate was the first of a two-debate weekend. The same group debates today for 90 minutes on NBC's "Meet the Press." The first hour will be televised.

The night's most aggressive exchanges did not involve Romney. Instead, Paul attacked Gingrich and Santorum.

Paul charged that Gingrich was a "chicken hawk" for voting to send young people to war after not serving himself during the Vietnam War.

Gingrich responded that he was "an Army brat" whose family experience gives him "a pretty good sense of what military families and veterans' families need."

Paul didn't relent. "I think people who don't serve when they could and they get three or four or even five deferments aren't – they have no right to send our kids off to war, and – and not be even against the wars we have. I'm trying to stop the wars, but at least, you know, I went when they called me up," he said.

Gingrich punched back. "Dr. Paul has a long history of saying things that are inaccurate and false," he charged. "The fact is, I never asked for deferment. I was married with a child. It was never a question."

Paul kept up the heat. When he was drafted, he said, "I was married and had two kids, and I went."

Santorum, who took center stage for the first time since he came within eight votes of Romney in Iowa, also took fire from Paul. "You're a big spender, that's all there is to it. You're a big-government conservative," Paul said, slamming Santorum for voting to increase the debt limit and supporting earmarks.

"I had a responsibility as a senator from Pennsylvania to go there and represent the interests of my state," Santorum said. "I don't apologize for that."

The biggest applause of the night came when Gingrich, after a discussion about gay marriage, turned the topic to what he called a different kind of bigotry. Gingrich criticized gay-marriage advocates for moving against the Catholic Church, including Catholic Charities, because the church does not accept gay marriage.

"The bigotry question goes both ways. And there's a lot more anti-Christian bigotry today than there is concerning the other side. And none of it gets covered by the news media." Once the applause died down, Romney, a Mormon, said "Me too."

Meanwhile, casino mogul Sheldon Adelson has given $5 million to an independent group supporting Gingrich, the first of what is expected to be many millions the Las Vegas billionaire plans to spend this election year, the Washington Post reported.

The check from Adelson is the latest in an avalanche of campaign cash flooding the presidential season to independent groups known as Super PACs. The check was cut Friday to Winning Our Future, a group run by former Gingrich associates, according to two people close to the donor.

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