Rick Santorum appeared on Fox News Sunday, during which he discussed the possibility of a split vote among anti-Romney conservatives in South Carolina, and also continued to attack on Mitt Romney on the issue of health care reform in Massachusetts:
Chris Wallace: As long as they stay in the race, however, Perry and Gingrich, doesn’t it have the practical effect of helping Romney and doesn’t it diminish the effectiveness of social conservatives in trying to help pick the nominee?
Santorum: Well, I don’t think it’s just social conservatives. It’s all conservatives. I think a lot of conservatives have concern about Governor Romney’s record on the economy and Romneycare as a real scarlet letter here that we can’t have a nominee that takes away the most important issue of this election which is an explosion of federal government and robbing the people’s freedom on the federal level with Obamacare and Romneycare, which was the predecessor to Obamacare, just disqualifies him and his ability to go out and aggressively go after this top down approach to health care.
So, this is not just social conservatives. I’m hearing from conservatives across the board, economic, foreign policy. They’re looking for someone with a strong consistent track record. And I’m hopeful — again, you know, will it help? Yes. It would be helpful if everybody drop out and I would win. But, you know, the idea is, we’re going to go through this process, people have the right to go out and make the case to the voters and then we’ll see what happens.
