After devoting themselves (with great success) to tearing down Newt Gingrich for the last two weeks, the Romney campaign is abruptly pivoting to attacking Rick Santorum. Polls suggest the former Pennsylvania Senator may have momentum heading into Tuesday’s caucuses.
Romney’s national campaign chair Tim Pawlenty held a conference call on Monday to criticize Santorum’s use of earmarks while a Congressman and Senator, which he has defended in debates. He also highlighted a 2003 quote from Santorum defending the Bush administration’s spending increases, saying “I came to the House as a real deficit hawk, but I am no longer a deficit hawk.”
“He’s held himself out as the perfect or near perfect conservative when in fact that’s not his record,” Pawlenty said, acknowledging Santorum could perform well in Minnesota and Colorado on Tuesday. “We just want to make sure the rhetoric and the claims and the image he’s presenting to the conservative base is not a false one.”
In a snarky maneuver the Romney campaign has pulled off several times this year, the campaign again sent out a 2008 press release from Romney’s first presidential run in which Santorum endorsed him as “the clear conservative candidate.”
A recent PPP poll shows Santorum with a chance of winning Minnesota and running a strong second to Romney in Colorado. This suggests that he could get another look as the anti-Romney alternative now that Newt Gingrich appears to be fading. After learning the hard way in South Carolina never to give your opponents a chance to revive their campaign, Romney’s team is clearly looking to stop his surge before it starts.
Santorum spokesman Hogan Gidley said the attacks highlighted the candidate’s strength.
“Gov. Romney does what he always does and directs his well-funded attack machine to destroy the opponent,” he said in an e-mail to reporters. “Mitt Romney’s act is tired, old and wearing thin with voters and I suspect at this point, with the media too.”
The former Pennsylvania Senator is dishing it out as well, invoking the famed “death panel” myth about President Obama’s health care plan on Monday to attack Romney’s own reforms.
Benjy Sarlin
Benjy Sarlin is a reporter for Talking Points Memo and co-writes the campaign blog, TPM2012. He previously reported for The Daily Beast/Newsweek as their Washington Correspondent and covered local politics for the New York Sun.
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