Santorum drops out, clearing the way for Romney

Sur­rounded by mem­bers of his fam­ily Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial can­di­date, for­mer Penn­syl­va­nia Sen. Rick San­to­rum announces he is sus­pend­ing his can­di­dacy effec­tive today in Get­tys­burg, Pa., Tues­day, April 10, 2012. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar)

KASIE HUNT, MARC LEVY

Asso­ci­ated Press

GETTYSBURG, Pa. — Rick San­to­rum cleared the way for Mitt Rom­ney to claim vic­tory in the long and hard-fought bat­tle for the Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial nom­i­na­tion Tues­day, giv­ing up his “against all odds” cam­paign as Romney’s tena­cious con­ser­v­a­tive rival.

Santorum’s with­drawal sets up what is sure to be an acri­mo­nious seven-month fight for the pres­i­dency between Rom­ney, the for­mer Mass­a­chu­setts gov­er­nor, and Demo­c­ra­tic Pres­i­dent Barack Obama, with the cer­tain focus on the still-troubled economy.

“This has been a good day for me,” a smil­ing Rom­ney told sup­port­ers in Wilm­ing­ton, Del., say­ing he believes San­to­rum “will con­tinue to have a major role” in the Repub­li­can Party.

In a pre­view of the per­sonal attacks that lie ahead, Obama’s cam­paign man­ager declared that Amer­i­cans nei­ther like nor trust Rom­ney, and the Rom­ney camp said the fight had always been about defeat­ing Obama, not GOP rivals.

“This game is a long, long, long way from over,” San­to­rum said as he bowed out of the con­test with Rom­ney. “We are going to con­tinue to go out there and fight to make sure that we defeat Pres­i­dent Barack Obama.”

San­to­rum had been fac­ing a loss in the April 24 pri­mary in Penn­syl­va­nia, the state he rep­re­sented in Con­gress for 16 years, and where the Rom­ney cam­paign planned nearly $3 mil­lion in ads against him.

Whether or not there are lin­ger­ing hard feel­ings, San­to­rum didn’t men­tion Rom­ney, who has been the front-runner for months and was far ahead in the race for the 1,144 del­e­gates needed to clinch the nom­i­na­tion at the party’s con­ven­tion in August.

Rom­ney has tried to ignore his GOP rivals and cam­paign against the pres­i­dent since he first entered the race last year with a pitch focused on the recov­er­ing but still frail econ­omy. But Rom­ney was forced to go after San­to­rum and for­mer house Speaker Newt Gin­grich after San­to­rum showed strength in Iowa and Gin­grich in South Car­olina early this year. Then San­to­rum kept on, mem­o­rably win­ning three South­ern primaries.

Romney’s cam­paign has long been the best funded, the best orga­nized, and the most pro­fes­sion­ally run of the GOP contenders.

Despite Santorum’s refusal to get out of the race ear­lier — and Gin­grich hasn’t offi­cially dropped out yet — Rom­ney had already begun look­ing ahead with a uni­fy­ing mes­sage. He told Penn­syl­va­nia sup­port­ers last week that “we’re Repub­li­cans and Democ­rats in this cam­paign, but we’re all con­nected with one des­tiny for America.”

And Obama has turned squarely to face Rom­ney, recently assail­ing him by name, as his cam­paign has worked to paint Rom­ney as a rich elit­ist who will win the nom­i­na­tion only because he buried his oppo­nents under mil­lions of dol­lars in neg­a­tive advertising.

“Nei­ther he nor his spe­cial inter­est allies will be able to buy the pres­i­dency with their neg­a­tive attacks,” Obama cam­paign man­ager Jim Messina said Tues­day after San­to­rum left the race. “The more the Amer­i­can peo­ple see of Mitt Rom­ney, the less they like him and the less they trust him.”

In response, a Rom­ney cam­paign spokes­woman insisted that “for Mitt Rom­ney, this race has always been about defeat­ing Pres­i­dent Obama, and get­ting Amer­i­cans back to work.”

But Rom­ney still has had to wage a drawn-out nom­i­na­tion fight that’s seen can­di­date after can­di­date try to block his path. That has high­lighted Romney’s prob­lem with the most con­ser­v­a­tive vot­ers. As recently as last week, activists hud­dled with San­to­rum to try and fig­ure out how to keep him in the race, and Gin­grich was still insist­ing Tues­day that his cam­paign rep­re­sents the “last stand for con­ser­v­a­tives” as he vowed to stay in the race until the convention.

Claim­ing a vic­tory of sorts, San­to­rum said Tues­day, “Against all odds, we won 11 states, mil­lions of vot­ers, mil­lions of votes.”

That took its toll on Rom­ney. It all started in Iowa, where vote counts ini­tially showed an eight-vote Rom­ney vic­tory — giv­ing him momen­tum and head­lines. But weeks later — after the cam­paign had moved to South Car­olina and Rom­ney was bat­tling Gin­grich — San­to­rum was declared the winner.

Romney’s cam­paign left San­to­rum for dead as he beat Gin­grich in Florida and won in Nevada. But he lost three states — Col­orado, Min­nesota and Mis­souri — to San­to­rum on Feb. 7, breath­ing new life into the for­mer senator’s insur­gent can­di­dacy and forc­ing Rom­ney to com­pete for two more months. San­to­rum even­tu­ally won con­tests in Ten­nessee, North Dakota, Okla­homa, Kansas, Mis­sis­sippi, Alabama and Louisiana.

The bat­tle forced Rom­ney to spend more money attack­ing San­to­rum with neg­a­tive ads in big Mid­west­ern states like Michi­gan, Illi­nois and Ohio, where he won increas­ingly large victories.

Now, he must rise to the daunt­ing chal­lenge of tak­ing on an incum­bent pres­i­dent backed by what’s expected to be one of the most sophis­ti­cated re-election cam­paigns in his­tory. Long­time Repub­li­can strate­gist Ed Gille­spie joined the Rom­ney cam­paign this month to help, but the team hasn’t been able to expand much beyond the small core group of loyal strate­gists that waged the pri­mary. The cam­paign will also need to ramp up the process to vet pos­si­ble vice pres­i­den­tial picks.

“We’ll be think­ing about that this week and mak­ing a num­ber of deci­sions,” Rom­ney said Tues­day after a sup­porter asked him who he might choose for his run­ning mate.

Obama’s cam­paign has a size­able cash advan­tage over Romney’s, hav­ing more than $84 mil­lion in the bank at the end of Feb­ru­ary, Fed­eral Elec­tion Com­mis­sion records show. Romney’s cam­paign had about $7.2 mil­lion. Those fil­ings show Rom­ney has a fifth the paid staff of Obama’s cam­paign. He had yet to tap the resources of the Repub­li­can Party that will become avail­able to the party nominee.

Santorum’s exit doesn’t greatly change Obama’s cal­cu­lus. The pres­i­dent and his cam­paign have been expect­ing to face Rom­ney all along and have already been tar­get­ing him. Yet the depar­ture of Romney’s chief GOP rival means this is the point where the Obama cam­paign will engage even more heavily.

From the White House, Vice Pres­i­dent Joe Biden has led the polit­i­cal fire against Rom­ney, and over the past week Obama has started tying his speeches about eco­nomic fair­ness to Rom­ney — directly, or in the coy way he chose Tues­day, warn­ing of old, failed eco­nomic ideas from a can­di­date “who shall not be named.”

Obama’s speech in Florida, amid a full day of fundrais­ing, was partly designed to draw a con­trast between him­self and Rom­ney. The pres­i­dent is build­ing his re-election cam­paign on the theme that he would help every­one suc­ceed while Rom­ney would cater to the rich and leave many peo­ple to struggle.

“This elec­tion will prob­a­bly have the biggest con­trast that we’ve seen maybe since the Johnson-Goldwater elec­tion, maybe before that,” Obama told donors at a cam­paign event. In his 1964 race against Repub­li­can Barry Gold­wa­ter, for­mer Pres­i­dent Lyn­don John­son car­ried 44 of 50 states and won 61 per­cent of the pop­u­lar vote, the largest share of any can­di­date since 1820.

Romney’s team paints that argu­ment as divi­sive. “This blame, this pop­ulism of try­ing to go and divide Amer­ica, is not only wrong, it’s dan­ger­ous,” Rom­ney said Tues­day in Delaware.

Rom­ney trails Obama in orga­niz­ing in some key bat­tle­ground states such as Ohio and Florida, though Rom­ney aides point to net­works of sup­port­ers and vol­un­teers that remain in place since his win­ning pri­mary cam­paigns in the two elec­toral prizes.

The same is true in Iowa, where Rom­ney nearly won the Jan­u­ary cau­cuses, and New Hamp­shire and Nevada, where he did win in the pri­mary campaign’s early days. The five are in the top 10 most com­pet­i­tive since 2000, and were all car­ried by Obama four years ago.

Other more typ­i­cally Republican-performing bat­tle­grounds Rom­ney is eye­ing at return­ing to the GOP col­umn include Col­orado, Vir­ginia and North Car­olina, which Obama flipped after con­sec­u­tive GOP victories.

So far, polling shows peo­ple tend to like Obama more than Rom­ney. Yet the public’s top issue is also Obama’s biggest vul­ner­a­bil­ity. Despite recent improve­ments in the public’s out­look, rat­ings of Obama’s han­dling of the econ­omy remain in neg­a­tive ter­ri­tory. Accord­ing to a Wash­ing­ton Post-ABC News poll released Tues­day, Rom­ney and Obama are about even on which can­di­date Amer­i­cans trust more to han­dle the economy.

Posted by AP News on Apr 10 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.