Free Republic

Chicago - The Republican race for president looks like a two-man contest in Illinois Thursday night. Mitt Romney is ahead of Rick Santorum among Illinois Republicans, even after Santorum’s big victories in Alabama and Mississippi on Tuesday. But Santorum is within striking distance for next Tuesday's primary. An exclusive FOX Chicago News poll found a six point lead for Romney among those likely to vote in the March 20 presidential primary. Romney had the support of 37 percent on Wednesday. Rick Santorum earned 31 percent of the vote.

As Rick Santorum desperately tries to make a dent in Mitt Romney’s formidable delegate lead, he faces an unlikely obstacle on the primary calendar: his home state of Pennsylvania. Yes, Santorum is currently favored — though hardly a lock — to win the popular vote in the state he represented in Congress for 16 years. But Pennsylvania’s non-binding primary rules for distributing delegates raise the prospect that Santorum, who has said he’ll win the vast majority of the state’s delegates, could actually come away from next month’s primary empty-handed at a time when he can ill-afford it. Which means the...

DETROIT, Feb. 28 (UPI) -- Mitt Romney was a double winner Tuesday, capturing the Michigan and Arizona Republican presidential primaries, results showed. The Detroit Free Press declared Romney the victor over his GOP rivals in Michigan. With about 74 percent of the precincts counted, Romney had 317,258 votes (41 percent) to Rick Santorum's 286,530 (37 percent), results posted by the Free Press showed. Ron Paul was third with 88,521 votes (12 percent) and Newt Gingrich followed with 50,726 votes (7 percent). Another 2 percent voted "uncommitted" and a handful of votes went to several other Republicans who are no longer...

Look at the chart at the bottom of the page: Santorum's 10 point over Romney lead has been cut down to a 1 point lead...in just 4 days. Unfortunately for Gingrich supporters (such as myself), Newt has stabilized at 16, and it look like Romney, not Newt, has been the chief beneficiary of Santorum's recent polling dive.

Via BuzzFeed. As expected, they’re going hard after his fiscal heresies. I’m giving you Santorum’s new ad here too, which is noteworthy first because he touts his tea-party cred (ironic) and second because he’s now making electability a core component of his pitch. No other Not Romney has been in that position before — but the numbers do back him up, for now: One thing that has remained constant in the ever changing GOP Presidential race is that Mitt Romney is the strongest candidate against Barack Obama…at least until now. PPP’s newest national poll finds Romney trailing Obama by 7...

Appearing on CNN's State of the Union today, Rick Santorum told host Candy Crawley that his loss yesterday to Mitt Romney in CPAC's annual straw poll was because he didn't pay for votes. From Politico: "Well, you know, those straw polls at CPAC... for years Ron Paul has won those because he trucks in a lot of people, pays for their tickets, and they come in and vote and they leave. We didn't do that, we don't do that. i don't try to rig straw polls." Pressed further on whether or not he felt Romney had rigged the poll, Santorum...