They’re going to try and bully you out but hang in there.

The emergence of Fred Thompson as a top contender in the Republican presidential race has sparked a clash with rival Mitt Romney over the social conservatives who are crucial to winning the GOP nomination.

In his opening salvo, Romney has seized upon Thompson’s work as a lobbyist who tried to lift federal restraints on abortion counseling in the early 1990s.

Thompson, a former Tennessee senator, describes himself as “pro-life.” But billing records released Thursday confirmed that — contrary to his initial denial — he charged $4,790 for lobbying and legal work he did for the National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Assn.

Thompson has not formally entered the White House race, but he is expected to do so soon. He would be the only prominent Southerner in the contest, and polls have found that he has a strong appeal to religious conservatives.

That dynamic poses a threat to Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts who has tried to position himself as the party’s most viable “family values” candidate.

“In many ways, the Romney campaign and the emerging Thompson campaign are on a collision course when it comes to campaigning for this constituency of conservative Christians,” said John C. Green, senior fellow at the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.

For weeks, Thompson has targeted the party’s conservative wing as the foundation of his nascent candidacy, using talk radio and blogs to build grass-roots support as he has traveled the nation raising money.

But disclosure of his lobbying to ease a rule that barred abortion counseling at federally funded clinics gave Romney an opening to try to block Thompson’s momentum.

When the Los Angeles Times reported Thompson’s lobbying for the family-planning group earlier this month — based on minutes of one of the organization’s board meetings and several interviews with those familiar with the matter — his spokesman, Mark Corallo, denied it had taken place. “There’s no documents to prove it, there’s no billing records, and Thompson says he has no recollection of it — says it didn’t happen,” Corallo said.

Since then, Thompson and his spokesmen have been more coy on the subject. In an interview with the conservative RedState Radio, Thompson questioned the authenticity of the board minutes. “It’s like, I come up with a piece of paper and say it’s true because I wrote it down here,” Thompson said, adding that he would not “respond to client matters or alleged client matters.”

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