Free Republic

CHICAGO — On the issue Republicans tell pollsters is the most important of 2012, Rick Santorum these days has very little to say. His typical stump speech, an almost hour-long mixture of Orwellian fears of government overreach, history lessons about the French and Middle Eastern revolutions and suggestions that President Barack Obama would rather side with Islamists than Americans, has evolved into a tour de force of building fear in his listeners. Since winning primaries in Alabama and Mississippi, Santorum’s standard remarks have generally excluded an economic plan — the heart and soul of the message his chief GOP rival,...

Newt Gingrich had to win Mississippi and Alabama in order to remain a viable candidate. Those states weren't essential because of their delegate counts or their importance to the national election, but because Gingrich had won nothing outside the South and staked everything on a southern strategy. He lost. He remains in the campaign, but he's a ghost, a bitter aftertaste, and a thorn in Rick Santorum's side. Santorum now faces his own "must win" primary, Illinois. He's won more states than Gingrich, but his strength so far has been in the Midwest and South, and in neither region has...

Rick Santorum’s campaign and super PAC have been outspent by a margin of 7 to 1 in the Illinois primary, with forces supporting Mitt Romney shelling out a total of about $3.7 million on the airwaves, according to a GOP media-buying source. Romney’s campaign has spent $1,117,704 million in Illinois while the super PAC Restore Our Future has put in $2.556,353 million. The Santorum campaign spent a comparatively modest $219,961 and the super PAC backing Santorum, the Red White and Blue Fund, put in $312,150. The gulf was even more enormous in the crucial, expensive Chicago media market. There, Romney’s...

BOSTON, Feb. 1 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Today, former U.S. Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA) announced his endorsement of Governor Mitt Romney. Senator Santorum served two terms in the United States Senate where he was also Chairman of the Senate Republican Conference, the third-ranking member of the Republican leadership.

Last week Rick Santorum vowed to end America’s “pandemic of pornography,” insisting that if he were president he would limit the rights of adults to show and view images of consenting adults having sex. No doubt there is too much pornography in this country, and anyone thinking of watching it should go read their Bible instead. But what I want in a president is a pragmatist, not a panderer. It would have been one thing for Santorum to say that his real crusade is against pedophilia or against child trafficking. Those are real evils that must be stopped. But that’s...

Sunday, March 18, 2012 It's Time For Gingrich To Drop Out of Race For GOP Nomination EDITORIAL The time has come for former House Speaker Newt Gingrich to drop out the Republican presidential race and allow Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum to battle it out for the GOP nomination. After an up-and-down campaign, Gingrich based his chances primarily on a Southern strategy. That worked, with wins in South Carolina and Georgia. Then Gingrich set his sights on Alabama and Mississippi, where voters make their decisions on Tuesday. Gingrich had been first or second in those two states in pre-election polls....

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Pressure is mounting on Republican Mitt Romney to win next Tuesday's presidential primary in Illinois, a state considered friendly territory as he seeks to fend off a growing challenge from conservative rival Rick Santorum. Romney and Santorum have added campaign events in Illinois over the next few days to try to get a leg up in the state, where a Chicago Tribune poll last week gave Romney a narrow lead of 35 percent to Santorum's 31 percent. The former Massachusetts governor is pouring money into Illinois and sending an ally, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, to campaign...

In all likelihood Mitt Romney will manage to win the necessary 1144 delegates, pre-convention, to win the GOP presidential nomination. So what I am about to write about Rick Santorum has to be seen in this context. In no way shape or form am I hyping Santorum's chances to prevail in the end, but only trying to reflect what is now happening on the ground and how that may impact the lay of the land going forward to put some temporary roadblocks in the path of Romney winning the nomination. Having said that Rick Santorum's odds of stopping Romney from...

Santorum Says He Would Enforce US Obscenity Laws That Obama Ignores By NBC's Andrew Rafferty ARLINGTON HEIGHTS, IL -- Rick Santorum accused President Barack Obama of not enforcing the country's obscenity laws and said Friday that as chief executive he would crack down on illegal pornography. Santorum found himself answering pornography questions during a stop at an Italian restaurant here after the discovery of a statement posted in his campaign website in which he asserts that "America is suffering a pandemic of harm from pornography." Recent reporting has shed light on the letter in which the former Pennsylvania senator vowed...

MARCH 16, 2012 Tampa Tempest Newt Gingrich Plots Convention Chaos. By Robert Costa As he waited for the returns on Tuesday, Newt Gingrich didn’t pay much attention to the soft flicker of Fox News. Instead, as he sat with his family and a few aides in a suite at the Wynfrey Hotel in Birmingham, Ala., he was quietly glued to his BlackBerry, thumbing his way through e-mails. He was mostly cheerful, according to those in the room. He reminisced about campaigns past with his daughters. He reviewed his schedule; he bantered with his wife, Callista; he settled on a purple...

GOP being Punk’d? We know that Democrats are crossing over in open primaries, such as Mississippi and Alabama, in order to vote for Rick Santorum, a big union candidate, their votes intended to throw the Republican National Convention into a contested balloting process. This tactic was written up at the Daily Kos. Big union money has even invested for the Santorum campaign. Pardon me for not having all the pertinent facts and I confess I don’t even have time to search for them all, today, to say nothing of presenting and formatting them, here. Can you help? Place further information...

Illinois Primary Could Be Rick Santorum's Big Chance The Republican presidential contest next week gives the conservative a shot at seizing the momentum from front-runner Mitt Romney, who leads him there by just 4 points. By Paul West March 14, 2012 — After a pair of pivotal Southern tests, the Republican presidential race has become a battle between Mitt Romney's grind-it-out delegate arithmetic and Rick Santorum's popular momentum. It's not exactly an even nomination fight at the moment. Romney remains the clear favorite, though his campaign advisors don't expect him to lock up the needed 1,144 delegates before May, at...

....Newt Gingrich is not getting out of the race any time soon. Here’s why: Gingrich firmly believes that staying in the race is the best way to prevent Mitt Romney from clinching the nomination before the convention in August. And he actually may have a point.... Gingrich knows that it is virtually impossible for him, or Santorum for that matter, to beat Romney on delegates, but he makes the case — and it is not far-fetched — that unless Romney starts winning delegates at a faster pace he won’t clinch nomination by end the end of the primaries.... “My expectation...

Supposedly Team Paul is engaged in "initial discussions" with Santorum and Gingrich too, but c'mon. Newt's chances at the nomination are only slightly higher than Paul's are and Santorum's hawkish social conservatism makes him a total nonstarter for libertarians. Just today, Reason editor Matt Welch published a column shivering at the thought that Team Sweater Vest might be back for another try in 2016. Romney’s the only game in town for the rEVOLution, just as he’s been since the debates started. (According to Time, one of Romney’s allies joked that Paul is their “deputy campaign manager.”)This is the right time...

Despite his losses in the Alabama and Mississippi primaries, Mitt Romney appears to have expanded his delegate lead on Tuesday. The most recent projections from AP show Rick Santorum took 31 delegates from Alabama and Mississippi, while Newt Gingrich took 24 delegates and Romney got 23 But this morning, Romney was projected to win all nine delegates from American Samoa’s caucuses, and he also won the Hawaii caucuses by a large margin. AP projections show Romney beat Santorum 18 delegates to four in those jurisdictions. So, as of this morning, Romney has won 41 delegates from Tuesday’s contests, compared to...

Newt Gingrich says, "Between us, Santorum and I are stopping Romney."

More than half of Republicans nationwide (53%) say that all members of the current field of GOP presidential candidates should stay in the race until one clinches the nomination. About one-fifth (21%) say that Newt Gingrich should drop out, leaving Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum to compete for the nomination, while another fifth (20%) say all candidates but Romney should drop out, allowing Romney to focus on the general election campaign..... Some Santorum supporters have argued that Gingrich should drop out, saying that Santorum alone would have a better chance of consolidating the conservative GOP vote that has thus far...

If Mitt Romney wins the Republican presidential nomination, he'll have many options for a running mate. His current rival Rick Santorum probably won't be one of them. Romney said as much Tuesday when Neil Cavuto asked him on Fox Business if he would choose a candidate to his right in order to win the election. "Well that would preclude, of course, Rick Santorum," Romney said. "Because I mean look at his record. I find it interesting that he continues to describe himself as the real conservative.

Birmingham, Ala. -- The question for Republican Newt Gingrich is not whether he will stay in the presidential race after Tuesday's primaries in Alabama, Mississippi and Hawaii. The question is where he'll take the campaign next. The Gingrich campaign provided the latest answer, announcing plans to head to Illinois and Louisiana later this week even as most polls offered little certainty about how Tuesday's contests would turn out. Gingrich, a former House speaker who represented Georgia, had predicted victories in nearby Alabama and Mississippi. But more recently he and his advisers have revised expectations to say that even a "strong"...

5 PM ET: NETWORK EXITS SHOW ALABAMA TIGHT; ROMNEY TAKES MISSISSIPPI... DEVELOPING DRUDGE POLLS HAVE CORRECTLY PREDICTED EVERY RACE