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GRAND JUNCTION, CO -- Mitt Romney's campaign has begun to train its sights on Rick Santorum over the past 48 hours, reflecting the Romney campaign's concern that the former Pennsylvania senator may pose the freshest threat to their frontrunner status.
The Romney campaign released a barrage of opposition research on Santorum on Monday morning, the type of offensive tactic that had previously been reserved for Newt Gingrich and, before him, Texas Gov. Rick Perry. The former Massachusetts governor's campaign worked to link Santorum to pork barrel spending during his time in Congress, and touting his endorsement of Governor Romney in the last presidential race.
Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty assailed Santorum's record on spending during a conference call with reporters, listing the litany of earmarks Santorum had supported -- and has subsequently defended -- during his time in Congress.
And, in a reflection of the changing dynamics in the GOP nominating battle, Pawlenty sought to downplay expectations for Romney's performance in tomorrow's Minnesota caucuses -- a minor nominating contest, but one in which Santorum believes he might be able to score a February upset.
"I think it's going to be a tight race. Mitt Romney is competitive here," Pawlenty told Andrea Mitchell in an MSNBC interview this afternoon, repeating a point he made on the conference call. "I think you'll see a clumping result tomorrow. But it's certainly a place where other candidates are going to have a stronghold, and it's not going to be a walk in the park for Mitt Romney."
Why the change in focus? It's reflective of a change in political geography and political realities that opens the door for Santorum to climb back into the top tier of candidates this week.
Social conservatives make up a greater proportion of the voters in Minnesota, whose caucus-goers might most closely resemble caucus-goers in Iowa -- the contest in which Santorum barely edged Romney on Jan. 3. Unlike in Iowa, though, Romney doesn't have the benefit of having spent the kind of money as he did in Iowa, and his infrastructure there is less developed than it was in the Hawkeye State.
Campaigning this morning in Rochester, and clearly enjoying the chance to scrap with the frontrunner, Santorum delivered a speech attacking Romney for his Massachusetts healthcare plan, labeling it "Obamneycare" -- a term coined, ironically, by Pawlenty this June.
"The press likes to write the story that there is an inevitability to 'Obama light' on health care being the Republican nominee. That would be a devastating thing for the chances of us who would like to see President Obama defeated in the next election," he said. "Gov. Romney is dead wrong on the most important issue of the day and he should not be our nominee."
Santorum's campaign has aggressively circulated the results of computerized polling (data not used by NBC News) suggesting a surge in momentum for their candidate in Minnesota.
For the Romney campaign's part, they've largely ignored Minnesota and Missouri. Romney hasn't campaigned in Missouri at all in 2012, and has made only one stop in Minnesota: taking part in a rally in Eagan last week. Today, Romney will send surrogates John Bolton and Pawlenty to campaign for him in Minnesota, while he campaigns in Colorado for the next two days.
On Jan. 30, Romney was asked by a reporter what states he thought could present uphill battles going forward. Minnesota was the first state to pass his lips, and he described it as one of a number of states that present "challenges and opportunities, and as a "state that’s hard to predict how they’ll make their decision."
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Rick Santorum was named among the top 3 most corrupt senators in 2005-2006 by a Washington watchdog group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. See pages 207-218 - Rick Santorum Voted 8 times to raise the debt ceiling, increasing the debt by $4.7 trillion dollars. He sponsored a $50 million dollar bill to build an indoor rain forest. Probably the most unjust is Santorum’s involment with Jack Abramoff in protecting the Tan family and their staggering array of human rights abuses on the Commwealth of Morthern Marianas Islands. The Tan family ran sweatshops on the islands and Santorum provided legislative cover for the truly rancid sweatshops, their human rights violations and almost fathomless moral quagmire of forced prostitution and abortions..
One encouraging factor in the GOP nominating process is that all but one of the candidates are wasting huge sums of money. Go Rick! ( This week's Rick, that is ).
I just read Santorum's biography in Wikepedia. Even though the biographer tried to put a positive spin on Ricky, the guy still comes across as a slimeball. Seee http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rick_Santorum.
yeah, he's a "fiscal conservative" who loves to lobby for more money for his district, a "small gov't" believer who wants the constitution amended to ban gay marriage, a "loving christian" who wants to use the military to start wars.
what's not to love?
Can this kind of person be trusted? Is this type of person demontrate honor? We need a leader not a debater, not one who states he can manipulate opinion and get people to vote for him. Not one who had several affairs since 1962, yes folks, that is right he had many, Newt had more than two. In congress he wrote 24 fraudulent checks. How would you like to get a check from your employer that was fraudulent. He was fined $300,000 fro tax evasion. The FBI investigated him in a $10 million bribery scandal. The higher ups stopped it right when the FBI was going to arrest him. He earned $1.6 million from Freddie Mac while working one hour a month for them. That's a whopping $25,000 an hour. i would like to make that much, and the list goes on and on. What does it say about people that don't care about these items and voted for him anyway. Makes you wonder. What will they tell their children and grandchildren. That they voted for a gutless man that cheated on his wife and children and would not pay childcare, a man who continually cheated, lied, etc, etc? If this person has been willing to cheat and lie to his family what is he willing to do to his trusted voters...lie, cheat, commit fraud. He has been doing this for a very long time and it will take a very long time for him to prove that he has changed.
No matter what Obama needs out of the White House so vote Republican!
i'll wait and see who is running for the republicans. Unlike you, I don't vote against someone, I vote for the better candidate. that's the american way. :)
From the looks of things, I can stop waiting. I'll vote for Obama in 2012.
Willard, Sanitorium, Newton, Ron (Ayn Rand) Paul are too wacko for presidential material.
I'm hoping for a brokered convention. Santorum and Paul doing well in the delegate count in Feb. followed by Newt taking the southern states on super Tuesday puts us well on the way.
To what, Jeff? Sounds like a perfect prelude for Obama to be re-elected!
Because winning is only worthwhile if it brings meaningful solutions. I doubt Romney is capable or willing to make serious spending cuts. Not all republicans are-- Bush ran up the deficit as bad as Obama and started the recession in the first place. The only possibility for getting an alternative to Romney is at a brokered convention.
Can you believe this? Newsmax accidentally prints Romney Nevada win article 2 days early! WTF? How obvious does it have to get? http://www.examiner.com/conspiracy-in-denver/newsmax-accidentally-prints-romney-nevada-win-article-2-days-early
Look out Rick, Willard borrowed sister Sarahs gun sight targets.
Santorum who?
Newt won't be here today...he's taken his wife to the mortician to have her done.
Romney reflects the ridiculous insistence of what is left of the Republican Party: that everyone must toady to the likes of the Koch brothers that pull the GOP purse strings, loot the nation’s wealth, ration opportunity
and rake in tailings of the nation’s trashed out future. They don’t even like Mitt but intend to palm him off on the rest of us.
For his part, Mitt keeps sticking his silver foot in his mouth. Now he fears not for those at the economic bottom or top. He really cares about folks like himself that hold a 00.006% slice of the nation’s upper wealth,
minus the 00.005% a bit higher up and throw away the 99.994% bottom rest of us.
Mitt is out of touch and neither understands nor cares about the destitute, working poor and declining middle class that struggle up from poverty by working to make ends meet.
As a grander version of all of us, Mitt pictures his struggle up from opulence, and with booku dollars and not a scintilla of sense he now extols the endorsement THE DONALD, a guy who just pretends to have the same big bucks.
As was posted on the web under the moniker crescentfang: “Donald Trump, the man who ran a TV program based on firing people. Not the endorsement I would want during a recession.” ---And not necessarily a
winning class-warfare stratagem.
Honestly Santorum is a non-factor and should be treated as such. The "social issue trip bomb" isn't moderate enough to win that sect of the Republican party's vote party, and he isn't conservative enough to get the true conservatives excited to the point they'll support him. If Ron Paul snatches a few delegates in each state and if the convention becomes brokered, the old man has a chance...because everyone knows his delegates aren't going to compromise. But the best chance Republicans have is Newt. Whether you like him or not he is a solid debater and has a chance.
And the insanity continues ... gotta love it when they eat their own.
If abortions are made illegal, women will be forced into back alleys. Education and birth control have lowered the number of abortions, so why not concentrate on these avenues, to make abortions minimal, but safe, and preserve womens' health. I think that the above argument will be too logical for all of the "right to life'ers, and they will continue to regress rather than progress.
The entire teapug party ought to change its name to the 'regressives' ... they haven't had an orignal idea in 30 years.
The problem with your argument is that the same backwards people that are against abortion are also against birth control and education. A bunch of ignorant jerks trying to force others to live as they think.
Mitt you must have decided a Romney Santorum ticket not such a good idea.America thanks you.Saturday night live not to happy though.But sure you have an even stranger person in mind
The more these nitwits stay in the public eye the more obvious their disqualifing flaws will be evident. Ron Paul is an anarchocapitalist with overtones of racism and a set of beliefs that would allow secession. Rick Santorum would sell his mother out to further his bizzare religious vision for America. He calls himself a Catholic but seems to adhere to a cobbled together set of fundamentalist cryptohistorical beliefs that if elected woulignite cultural warfare never before seen in this country. Newt is vermin like in his every action and pronouncement.He is a failed associate history professor refused tenure and dropped from his department who hitched his wagon to a movement at the right time and rose to power while magically becoming a millionaire without ever holding a job outside of government that paid more than $30k per year. He is a societal version of psoriasis scaley and discomforting and very hard to get rid of. On the surface Romney appears a perfectly reasonable choice until you discover the surface is all there is with not an iota of depth. His presidential bid is based solely on his desire to have the job and has absolutely no consistent or coherent philosophy.
The radicalization of the GOP has led a party of mature conservative Americans into the hands of Ludites, political and religious thugs, self interested multimillionaires and purveyors of hatred and misery. Election of one of these idiots is likely to end 200 plus years of American advancement and leave us in an unreversable death spiral.
jkh
President Obama will not have to run a negative campaign against any of the gop candidates----He has only to repeat their own words, lies, record and insider dealings.
I hate all of these selfish predators and their millions of dollars in charitable contributions.
Romney is not competitive in Minn. He's favored to win. If anything that would mean that Santorum is competitive as a possible come from behind candidate. Romney is still trying to label himself the underdog when he's at the head of the pack. I'd like to see Santorum win Minn. just because it might give Romney's ego a kick in the rear.
Romney didn't bother to campaign in Minnesota and Missouri because he thought that he had them in the bag. The idea that he might actually lose has him panicking. But not enough that he's willing to leave Colorado.
Santorum has no executive experience. That was the problem with Obama. In way over his head.
Instead of worrying about Rick Santorum, the Romney campaign should be concerned over their biggest enemy, and that is Mitt Romney himself.
This doofus just couldn't wait to jump on the band-wagon when the Susan G. Komen For The Cure organization decided (thanks to a right-wing former candidate for Georgia Governor) to attack Planned Parenthood.
Well, the SGK organization reversed course, Handel theright-wing extremist is gone, and there's Willard hanging in the wind like the dim-wit that he is.
Apparently the votes of women aren't important to Willard, but someone should remind Mr. $57,000-per-day that women are the majority - and every man who has a wife, mother, daughter, female friend, etc. in this country will think twice about supporting a candidate who acts to reduce the efforts in finding a cure for breast cancer.
It will be interesting to see how Willard tries to flip-flop on this, like he has on nearly everything that has come out of his mouth in the past six years (or longer...).
He really stepped in it this time!
totally agree with you Tom
The 'assault on Catholics' meme isn't going to play well in the female constituency, either.
If Mississippi can't pass fetus personhood,...that should tell the Righties that women as a voting bloc are pretty serious about protecting our rights.
I don't think Komen has a CLUE about how tuned in women are politically to this constant barrage on our bodies and our issues. Not a political winner for them,...and yet none seem so blind as those who refuse to see.
Let's just cancel the rest of the states and go straight to the convention. Let them select a name from a hat. It couldn't be any worse than what they have given the American people for options.
Willard should kiss Sanatorium's butt. If Rick were out of the race, Newt may have won an additional primary or two. Rickie wants to be Willard's VP, but it won't happen.
I couldn't care less about Santorum's religious convictions. The fact is, he's a sleazy politician. He was voted 3rd most corrupt politician in Congress in 2006 by CREW for selling his vote!
When he was voted out of the Senate by Pennsylvanian voters in 2006, the Huffington Post reported a leaked email:
A post-election e-mail to executives at the drug company GlaxoSmithKline details just how tough. ... The defeat of Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) "creates a big hole we will need to fill," the e-mail says.
This is more entertaining then anything I have seen on TV or at the movies in years. Let the games continue. Have my popcorn handy and enjoying every minute of the battle. The reason that there is no winner thus far is that they are a complete band of incompetent clowns. Democrats don't have to pay a dime for negative ads against any of them. They are doing it themselves. Great Job guys!