Santorum Attacks Romney During Wisconsin Trip
Former Sen. Rick Santorum, the first Republican presidential candidate to visit Wisconsin, fired up supporters Saturday by saying Mitt Romney wasn’t a true conservative.
In front of hundreds of cheering conservatives at a forum near Milwaukee’s airport, Santorum used an Etch-A-Sketch toy to attack Romney’s policy positions as inconsistent.
“My public policy isn’t written on an Etch-A-Sketch,” Santorum said, referencing the erasable board. “It’s written on my heart because I’m a conservative. I don’t just run as a conservative.”
Santorum faces a difficult task ahead. He vows to continue his campaign, despite an increasingly steep climb to the nomination.
Santorum won Saturday’s GOP primary in Louisiana but didn’t narrow the delegate gap. He’s urging his supporters to stick with him even as much of the party establishment has coalesced around Romney’s increasingly inevitable coronation.
Santorum is aiming to capture Wisconsin’s April 3 primary, after recent losses in nearby Michigan, Ohio, and Illinois.
“We’ll work up and down the state,” Santorum told reporters. “If we can pull off (a victory) — we’ve come so close, so often, but if we pull one off, again that undermines the inevitability argument (that Romney will win the Republican nomination).” Santorum told reporters after the Americans for Prosperity forum that he would spend four more days in Wisconsin ahead of the state’s primary.
Meanwhile, frontrunner Romney will visit the Badger State next weekend, and more trips are possible before the election, said Ted Kanavas, Romney’s state campaign chairman. Kanavas said he was unavailable for an on-camera interview with WISC-TV on Saturday.
About 20 people protested outside the forum in Milwaukee, chanting anti-Republican messages on the street.
Inside the event, supporters said they backed Santorum over Romney and President Barack Obama.
“He is full of conviction. He is full of passion. He is a patriot,” said Vivian Rowe of St. Francis, a mother of three. “I know he will do the right thing.”
Others said they were happy Wisconsin’s primary mattered, compared with previous years.
“It’s wonderful that we actually get to make a decision in this whole race,” said Anne Winrich, of Madison, who is a former employee of the health care industry, now unemployed. “Normally, it’s already made for us and we just sign on the bottom line, basically.”
Santorum started his speech by praising the policy actions of Gov. Scott Walker, who successfully stripped most public workers of many collective bargaining rights last year.
That kind of change is necessary in the nation’s capital, Santorum said.
“I support that (Walker) took on a very tough and intractable problem that makes it very difficult for state and local governments to be able to keep their costs in line, and keep taxes low and keep freedom high,” Santorum said.
Santorum picked up eight delegates in Louisiana on Saturday, winning the primary with the conservative and blue-collar vote. However, the former Senator is still far behind front-runner Romney.
Santorum isn’t the only national political figure to make a stop in Wisconsin. Newt Gingrich’s wife, Callista Gingrich, is set to appear in Madison on Thursday.
According to Gingrich’s website, his wife, a Wisconsin native, will appear at “Cocktails with Callista” Thursday at the Madison Club, part of several stops she has planned for Wisconsin in the next week.
