Primary voting starts in New Hampshire in less than 24 hours, and the candidates in both parties are making their final appeals ahead of the polling that begins 12 midnight Tuesday morning.The politicians are fanning out across the Granite State at multiple destinations and marathon town hall meetings in a race to the finish line. While Democrats are out in full force for a hard-fought race, the Republican candidates are trying to capitalize on their performances in Sunday night's FOX News Presidential Forum.

Five Republican candidates clashed over taxes, illegal immigration and change as the verbal sparring in Sunday's discussion centered on who's got the influence and record to fix Washington.

Speaking in tax-averse New Hampshire ahead of Tuesday's primary, the GOP candidates polling 10 percent or higher nationally ripped at each other's records while striving to capture the essence of Ronald Reagan that the Republican base hopes to recover 20 years after the 40th president's departure from the White House.

Watch FOX News on Thursday as the Republican candidates debate in Myrtle Beach, S.C.

But as candidates repeatedly mentioned Reagan, they also immediately dispensed with his 11th commandment not to speak ill of other Republicans. Mitt Romney, bombarded by his opponents in a debate just one night earlier, laid the first blow on his top New Hampshire rival, John McCain.

"One of the great lessons of Ronald Reagan is lowering taxes grows the economy," said Romney, whose battling for what he has called a must-win victory in the Granite State.

"Senator McCain was one of two Republicans who voted against the Bush tax cuts. I believe the Bush tax cuts helped our economy grow and (is) one of the reasons that we're not in a recession today. Senator McCain continues to believe ... that that was the right vote to take, and I respect that that's his view. I just happen to disagree with it."

McCain responded that cutting spending is required to go along with tax cuts. He said that the economy is resilient, but spending is out of hand, especially with lawmakers appropriating for themselves millions of dollars in earmarks.

"For 24 years as a member of Congress, I have never asked for or received a single earmark or pork barrel project for my state and I guarantee you I'll veto the bills, I'll ask for the line-item veto and I will veto them and I will make the authors of them famous. And we'll get spending under control and then we'll be able to have some fiscal sanity and restore trust and confidence on the part of the American people," McCain said.

Mike Huckabee also was a target of Romney, who said the former Arkansas governor raised taxes by $500 million net while in office.

"You make up facts faster than you talk so let's slow it down," Romney said, demanding an admission that taxes went up under Huckabee's administration.

"I had a court order that said we had to improve education. Maybe you don't have to obey the court in Massachusetts, I did in Arkansas. You know, education is a good thing for kids," Huckabee replied to the former Massachusetts governor.

Fred Thompson said no one in Washington has the guts or the persuasive skills to alter the debate on Social Security spending, which with Medicare makes up the largest chunk of the federal budget. The former Tennessee senator said to achieve change, he would speak clearly that Social Security is broken, and needs to be fixed.

"Everyone says it's a big problem; nobody puts anything on the table to do anything about it," Thompson said, adding that his plan would prevent Social Security from going bankrupt.

"It would do two things: allow people to set up an individual retirement account where the government would match their funds. ... The average guy at the end of their working life would have a few hundred thousand dollars, and it would save government money in the process, if you did one other thing, and that is index initial retirement benefits to inflation, instead of to wages, as they are now. ... My plan would not affect current retirees or those near retirement."

While finances composed much of the discussion, change has also become the catchword of the 2008 election, and Huckabee tried to claim the mantle, saying he wants to get rid of the Internal Revenue Service and institute a fair tax, also known as a national retail sales tax.

Thompson said he liked Huckabee's direction toward reform, but he fears a consumption tax would join an income tax, rather than replace it. He said he prefers a flatter tax system.

"We've got a 66,000 page monstrosity right now," Thompson said, describing the tax code. He said he supports a plan that says, "If you have an income of $100,000 or less as a couple, $50,000 as an individual, you're at a 10 percent bracket and if you have over that, you're at a 25 percent bracket, and that's it. And you get a personal deduction, but that's it, and you could have your choice."

Giuliani said Republicans don't do a good example of pointing out to the poor that Republicans create programs that help people get out of poverty. He said when he entered office in New York City, 1.1 million people were on welfare, 670,000 fewer were on welfare when he left. Likewise, he entered office when unemployment was 10.5 percent. It was 5 percent when he left.

"The overall tax burden on New Yorkers was reduced by 17 percent by the time I left office. It was the largest tax cut ever done in the history of the city, it was the largest tax cut done in government, anywhere, in the 1990s, including all city, all state, all at the federal level, because the federal level raised taxes during that period," he said.

Romney said the next president has to be someone who understands how the economy works, and how to shrink government to take out programs that aren't needed.

"Washington needs fundamental top to bottom change," he said, noting that people already inside Washington are not the ones to fix it.

"Sending the same people to Washington but in different chairs is not going to result in a different outcome," Romney said. He added that his business acumen -- founder of a multi-million dollar venture capital fund -- prepares him to be the chief executive.

"There's a very dramatic difference between talking about change and getting together in the cloakroom and working on a deal with other senators and actually having led an organization, with executive leadership skill, helping turn around a business, or turned around the Olympics, or turned around a state. And that is something which I think America is crying for. ... They want someone from the outside to deal with health care, with education, to get taxes down, to get us energy independent, somebody who knows how to deal with China economically so that we can make sure we don't lose our jobs to China," Romney added.

The Soft and Hard Realities of Immigration

The candidates also sparred over who has the strongest stance on border control and illegal immigration. Giuliani said the U.S. is not doing any favors to illegals by turning a blind eye to their border crossings and then permitting border-crossers to live in the shadows.

Thompson said Giuliani, Romney and Huckabee are latecomers to the realization that letting people live in the shadows is not good for the country.

"My concern is what we're saying to the other parents and children who are in Mexico for example, now. Are we encouraging, our policies encouraging the next generation of people to take the risk of being killed or being raped or being herded into the back of a van to try to make it across the border? It's not good for them, it's not good for our country. ... When I hear a president of Mexico chide us for enforcing the border, you know, I would say to him, 'What does it say about the leadership of a country when the exportation of its own citizens is an economic necessity?'"

Mike Huckabee on "FOX News Sunday" before the presidential forum.

Huckabee and Giuliani said that once children of illegals are in the U.S., they can't be turned out on the street. Both men defended their respective decisions to keep kids of illegals in school to prevent bigger problems. Both men also offered their prescriptions for reducing the growth of illegals in this country.

"What we need to do is say, seal the border, have a plan to get in the back of the line. No free rides. We won't have amnesty. And I think every one of us, including John McCain, agrees with that," Huckabee said, noting McCain's role as the sponsor of comprehensive immigration reform that included a temporary guest worker program that opponents call "amnesty" and Huckabee compared to Reagan's plan of the 1980s.

"We all love to invoke the name of Ronald Reagan. Let's not forget, with all due respect, Ronald Reagan was the one who signed the amnesty bill back in the '80s that's given us the mess now. We all love him, we all want to be like him, but even Ronald Reagan can make mistakes," he added.

Giuliani said he thinks he has the best fix for illegal immigration -- it includes a fence, technological, as well as physical, to warn the Border Patrol of people approaching the border, and a tamper-proof I.D. card that everyone would have to get.

"There should be a rule about coming into the United States. The rule should be like this: you have to identify yourself if you want to come into the United States. Every other country has this rule. We should have that rule. If you get your tamper-proof I.D. card, you can come in, you can work. You pay taxes. If you want to become a citizen, you get on line, you don't get preference over anyone else. And at the end of the line, you're going to have to be able to read English, write English and speak English," he said.

Romney too said amnesty or other pathways to staying in the U.S. don't work because it creates a model that encourages others to try the same.

"I believe that amnesty in any form, whether technical amnesty or just de facto amnesty or generally amnesty, it just doesn't work. The reason is, it attracts more people to do the same thing that the people in the past have done. It says, let's go to America, we know we're going to get to stay forever. It's simply the wrong approach. We welcome people to get in line with everybody else, but there should be no special pathway, no special privilege to remain in this country for the rest of their lives," he said.

'Getting' Usama bin Laden and Other Foreign Policy Objectives

McCain said he had a plan to get Usama bin Laden -- by funding the intelligence agencies to enable it to acquire the human intelligence and other capabilities, and to mandate bin Laden's capture as priority one.

McCain added that though he is not a governor, a position held by four of the last five presidents, he is well equipped to deal with executive challenges because he is familiar with the foreign policy issues that governors don't have to deal with.

"It's important to know the players, know the issues and have the knowledge and background in order to address them, and I will leave that to the judgment of the American people as to whether they think that that is important in these very, very challenging times," he said.

McCain also challenged Romney's foreign policy credentials, particularly on Iraq.

"I never heard him criticize the Rumsfeld strategy. I did not hear him support the strategy that we are now employing, and in a previous debate he said it was apparently working, when it was clear, to those of us who know Iraq, those who know the situation on the ground, that it was working," he said.

Romney responded that because he was the governor of a state, he didn't comment on President Bush's conduct of the war.

"I was running a state at the time the war was being entered into, and so I was not commenting on Don Rumsfeld or upon the president's management of the war. I did go to Iraq and spent time there and said that I was encouraged by the success of creating a coalition government and by the vote that occurred," he said.

"But I also indicated that it was apparent that there had been intelligence failures, and those intelligence failures did indeed lead to the fact that we were under-prepared and under-planned. There were some who said there would be dancing in the streets when we came into Baghdad, and there was, but for a short period of time. And our intelligence badly failed us in terms of understanding just how severe the crisis would be. We were understaffed by a dramatic amount," Romney continued.

Huckabee agreed that his time as governor made him specifically prepared to deal with foreign policy even if he had recently flubbed several details relating to foreign events in the news lately.

"When you make lots of speeches, there are going to be times when you have more of a slip. But I don't have a slip of my judgment. I don't have a slip of my character. I don't have a slip of the truth. I know where I stand. I have moral clarity. I have convictions," he said.

Giuliani said as mayor of New York City during the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, he's the only candidate with firsthand experience dealing with an "Islamic terrorist attack." He added that his position also gave him the distinct role of being host of the United Nations.

"It just happens to be part of the DNA of New York, that you're involved with the policy with the U.N. there," he said, adding, "When a Saudi prince handed me a $10 million check and wanted me to use it as a criticism of American foreign policy, I handed that check back to him and told him what to do with it, because I understand the critical issues on which you have to stand up for your country."

Thompson said he too has the chops to deal with foreign policy, noting he was chairman of the Senate Government Affairs Committee and led the vote on the bill to create a Homeland Security Department. Thompson said he opposes Huckabee's opinion that the world's view of the U.S. should be America's No. 1 priority. He gave the example of those who want to shut down Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where terror detainees are imprisoned.

"Closing down Guantanamo because people will think better of us and bring those people apparently here, which would give them rights that they don't have there and become a part of our judicial system, and lifting the embargo on Castro, and things like that, I simply disagree in terms of a view of the world and the kind of world that we live in," Thompson said.

Huckabee countered that his position on Guantanamo had nothing to do with the world's view.

"The fact is, I don't care what the rest of the world thinks. I care what America thinks. And it's become a divisive issue. I went to Guantanamo, I visited it. Quite frankly, I visited every prison in my state. I know a little bit about the difference between what we operate and what we were operating at Guantanamo. It wasn't that it wasn't too bad. The truth is, it was too darn good," he said. "So it's a matter of believing that we ought to have policy that brings this country together and not tears it apart. I don't think where we keep these people is as important as it is that we keep them and we don't let them go."

Nasty or Nice?

Asked to defend a series of campaign ads that his opponents have called negative, Romney said that he has 30 seconds to tell the picture, and nothing that he said is a distortion nor is it a personal attack.

But Huckabee and McCain, who both have been subjects of Romney's ads, denied they were working in tandem to counter Romney's ads. Huckabee and Romney both were forced to explain inconsistencies in their records.

Huckabee said he had made some verbal slips but "I think most of us do, especially if we talk as much as politicians do."

Romney countered that he's allowed to change his mind, and has been very up front when he does so.

"I certainly would far be in favor of a person who has the willingness to say 'I was wrong' and change their position and become right than someone who is so stubborn as to say they're not going to change their position," he said.