Rick Santorum appeared Thursday night on Fox News with Greta Van Susteren, and criticized the expected move by Florida to move its primary to January 31 in contravention of the RNC rules. And in addition to defending the positions of Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina to be the official early states, Santorum also alleged that Florida’s move is really a conspiracy to benefit Mitt Romney and Rick Perry, the two current frontrunners — and disadvantage the lower-tier candidates.
“For the life of me, I don’t understand what Florida is trying to accomplish, because whatever they’re going to accomplish, they’re gonna fail,” said Santorum. “You know, they’re gonna move their primary up — it’s talked about moving up to January. All these four primary — early primary states, Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, Nevada, will move ahead of them. And all you’ve effectively done is cut off one month of the lead-up time to this primary process.”
“And they’re gonna lose half their delegates,” Van Susteren added, to which Santorum concurred.
So far, so good — that is all an accurate analysis of what will happen to the primary calendar, as the official early states move up their contests in retaliation. But as the conversation continued, Santorum made his more nefarious accusation that Florida is trying to rig the contest.
“What I believe is going on, is somebody in Florida is shilling for Mitt Romney, and probably Rick Perry,” said Santorum. “They want to shorten the playing field now that these guys are ahead, so what — we’d rather have this election — I’m sure that they’d like to have the election tomorrow.
“So by moving up the calendar, you help the favorites. And there’s somebody in Florida who wants to help the favorite. They certainly don’t want to help the people of Florida, because they’re gonna be denied their delegates, and they’re gonna run afoul of the RNC, who was kind enough to pick them as the host state.
“So IÂ don’t really see a whole lot of advantage to the people of Florida doing it. I’m very disappointed they’re doing it. I’ve heard if from a lot of people in Florida that they’re not happy to do it. Their national committee people aren’t happy they’re doing it. But I suspect the Romney and Perry camps are very happy they’re doing it.”
