Posted on 01/21/2012 7:29:34 PM PST by Steelfish
JANUARY 21, 2012 Challenges Mount for Rick Santorum
By PATRICK O'CONNOR and BRODY MULLINS
CHARLESTON, S.C.—Republican White House hopeful Rick Santorum burst out of Iowa earlier this month on a wave of unexpected momentum.
But after a third-place finish in South Carolina, the former Pennsylvania senator finds himself limping into Florida without a clear path to victory and an unforgiving landscape for an under-funded candidate.
With 95% of the precincts reporting, Mr. Santorum was the top pick of 17% of Republican primary voters in South Carolina, well behind former House Speaker Newt Gingrich's 41% and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney's 27%. That result came a day after Iowa Republicans named him the official winner of their first-in-the-nation caucuses.
Mr. Santorum drew large crowds this week when he campaigned in the socially conservative regions of South Carolina. But he wasn't able to translate that into a strong showing on primary night. Now, as the race shifts to Florida, Mr. Santorum must figure out how to magnify his up-close appeal to an expansive and expensive state where money typically plays a large role in determining the winner.
On Saturday night, as he has all week, Mr. Santorum pledged to fight on.
"Three states, three winners. What a great country," he told his supporters at an election-night rally at the Citadel in Charleston. "It's a wide open race. Join the fight."
Mr. Santorum often cites his Iowa win as evidence he should remain in the race and has hinted that he expects Mr. Gingrich to flame out at some point. On Saturday, his campaign announced Mr. Santorum would immediately travel to Florida to start campaigning in the Sunshine State. His first event is a campaign rally Sunday at a chicken wing restaurant outside Fort Lauderdale.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
He has God. :-)
Who was the dealer? :-)
They are clearly not "equal with each other." Santorum won a butt kissing "Caucus" and Romney won New Liberalshire. Newt just won the one primary state that has determined the nominee since Ronald Reagan by a landslide having been outspent by the RINO 2-1. Santorum can almost assure conservative victory by getting out now and giving Newt the added momentum. You want to see Rick go across the country taking 10-15% of the conservative vote? How many more states do you want to see that in? Are you willing to see Newt lost Florida by 5% and Rick take 10? It's time for Rick to take one for the team!
If Newt can turn the tables on Mitt, then so can Rick.
“Split the vote”???? What vote is he going to split in Virginia??? Newt didn’t even have a ground game to get on the ballot.
We need an alternative with delegates in case something drops like how DNC-media took out Cain. Besides, Rick is on the ballot in my state and I fully intend to be voting for him come Super Tuesday. Instead of attacking Santorum, people need to be focusing their efforts on Romney and his wingman, RuPaul. Get either of them to drop and then get back to me on the “splitting” nonsense.
“No organization”??? Where do you get your “facts”? Santorum has people on the ground in every Florida county except two.
Really?
How do you know?
Has he called and told you that? Or are you projecting what you want and calling it G-d?
Did you listen to Newt's speech tonight? It was a Conservative ORGASM! He's calling out Godless judges BY NAME! Defending the Bill of Rights and Constitution agains Saul Alinsky radicals!!! Rick DOES NOT DO THIS. NO ONE ELSE DOES THIS! And THAT is why he won SC, and THAT is why Rick is never going to get any traction. Newt sucks up all the oxygen in the room! WAKE UP!
Don’t count on Colorado going for Romney. We have a strong tea party movement here. Gingrich might do ok. I will certainly caucus for him.
Santorum should stay in. He didn’t hurt Newt. He lost his deserved Iowa bounce, and this will be the very first real primary where only registered Repubs can vote. I personally know Dems who voted in SC. Today. I don’t know for whom they voted, but they are loyal libs who voted for Obama last election.
I think Romney has only negative to go against Newt this time, and in case Newt can’t stand up to the onslaught, we may be very very happy we still have Rick.
I hope that in the next couple days, someone like Newt or Sarah will say something about the bullying that Santorum is receiving from the Glee Agenda people. If it’s bad to bully a gay kid in high school, isn’t it bad to bully a former Senator? Today they threw glitter in his face, which is threatening (how did he know that whatever was co ing at him wasn’t acid or something dangerous? He has young children,one special needs). Why doesn’t google do something decent about their search engine constantly putting an obscenity about Santorum before his real websites? Again, he is a good man with young children. Why subject their family to such hate?
Is he free to oppose gay marriage? Is bullying OK if someone opposes gay marriage?? Let’s get this out into the open. Come on, Sarah, Newt, maybe Rush, someone with b*lls, stand up for this good man and his precious family.
I am wide awake...haven’t got around to the speech yet (just a clip - I got called away from the computer right after Santorum congratulated Newt), but I’m still not all that convinced that something in Newt’s past won’t come back to bite him. In that case we need an alternative to prevent handing the nomination to the likes of Paul or Slick Willard.
Oh come on. He's the most vetted of the bunch. Face it, it's either Newt or Romney and keeping a "bullpen" is not really an option. So yeah, we keep a back-up "just in case" and we risk the nomination. Sorry, but this is NOT how you win things!
Hear, Hear!!
Thank you. If Santorum truly cares for his country, he’ll get out now. I hope he does, but my instincts are that Santorum cares about Santorum and will stay. I hope I am wrong.
I’m not blind.
Sorry I just don’t buy into “all eggs in one basket” mentality, especially for a candidate with enough baggage to fill not just a boxcar, but an entire freight train.
I expect that Mittbots and Obama supporters are keen on eliminating opponents in the competition of ideas (hence the huge campaign dollars going out for negative advertising), but not conservatives who are comfortable with their candidate. It also doesn’t instill confidence after only 3 states for a candidate to be calling on fellow conservative candidates to drop out, yet not calling on Ron Paul or Romney to drop out. Newt was doing just that after LOSING two in a row.
It has the appearance that Newt and his supporters are worried he won’t gain enough traction on his own to beat the four remaining candidates beyond South Carolina and reeks of despiration on your part which is not exactly a strategy for beating Obama if you ask me.
Now that Newt has a win, we’ll see what he does with it but the continued calls (by Newt and his supporters) for Santorum to step aside aren’t going to win me over.
it doesn't change the fact about it or about people who run off at the mouth.
I'd feel like I'd been duped too, if i were you. But your irrationality is misdirected.
it doesn't change the fact about it or about people who run off at the mouth.
I'd feel like I'd been duped too, if i were you. But your irrationality is misdirected.
Nice salutation, did you have a problem with the first or second word?
With your attitude, you don't serve this country, you go to work and pay taxes and resent the hell out of the country.
It was you that said that the country's best days are behind us, not me.
I've lived a great life and not one dime from your taxes support me, I've got my own support and it doesn't include any dependency on you or the gummint.
As for running off at the mouth, you take umbrage at being called for something really stupid that you posted, and I just said that you should get to hell out of the country that I went to the Army to protect, and if you look real closely, you will notice that I didn't refer to your mouth or your rectum, in your case, the same orifice.
I heard the entire speech...I certainly didn’t get the “14-year old Beeber groupie” reaction you did. Newt’s a dullard and if I had to listen to “Mr. Professor” drone on day after day, I’d have to withdrawl from the class, change majors or whatever it took so I didn’t have to listen to him again.
Althought he threw out some “red meat” for the sheepdogs, his speech seemed disjointed, rambling and bordered on incoherent at times....I thought I was listening to RuPaul’s SC speech again. At least he had a few nice things to say about Santorum, more so for Rick than the other candidates.
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