Rick Santorum was on a mission Sunday to portray himself as the only alternative to Mitt Romney. Making the rounds on the morning talk shows, Santorum hammered on the point that the primary is now a “two-person race” between him and Romney.
It’s a strategy we’ve seen before. After Newt Gingrich lost Florida to Romney, he spun the results to argue that Florida cemented his role as the number two over Santorum. After South Carolina and now Florida, “it is now clear this will be a two-person race,” Gingrich said.
Now that he has the wind at his back, it’s Santorum’s turn to make the same argument. “I feel very good that this is a two-person race right now,” Santorum said on Meet The Press. On CNN’s State of the Union he repeated it: “We think this is a two-person race right now.” Like Gingrich before, Santorum’s goal is to convince the GOP base that he is now the only alternative to Mitt Romney because if GOP voters believe him, he has the chance to close ranks against Romney with the backing Newt Gingrich’s supporters.
Santorum has evidence to back up his assertion. A Public Policy Polling (D) survey has Santorum leading Romney nationally by 15 points; Gingrich lags in third place. Santorum’s big night on Tuesday included him stealing Colorado from Romney’s column.
Santorum sought to cast off doubts about his performance in Maine as well as the CPAC straw poll by, again, bringing the narrative back to the idea of a narrowing field. “We didn’t really participate in Maine at all,” Santorum told George Stephanopoulos on This Week, arguing that given that fact, results there prove it’s a two-man race: “You know, we ended up with 18 percent, really having not appeared up there or done anything in Maine, which was three times, you know, where the speaker was.” His focus now, he says, is to compete with Romney in Michigan and Arizona which will “really make this, you know, a two-person race.”
But Santorum took a few shots at Romney as well on Sunday. On CNN, Santorum dismissed the importance of Romney’s win by saying that Mitt Romney bought his CPAC straw poll win by investing resources in bringing his supporters to the conference. “For years, Ron Paul’s won those because he just trucks in a lot of people, pays for their ticket, and they come in and vote and then they leave,” Santorum explained, “you have to talk to the Romney campaign and how many tickets they bought. We’ve heard all sorts of things.” Santorum later backed off by saying that this was “standard procedure” for straw polls.
The Romney campaign responded to Santorum’s accusation in a statement to the Huffington Post:
Rick Santorum has a history of making statements that aren’t grounded in the truth. Yesterday Mitt Romney won the CPAC straw poll and won a separate nationwide survey of conservatives conducted by CPAC organizers. Also, Mitt Romney won the Maine caucuses. Conservative voters recognize that in order to change Washington, we need someone who isn’t a creature of Washington.
But the fact that Santorum lost a few rounds to Romney on Saturday doesn’t hurt his ability to present himself as the anti-Mitt Romney. What matters is his ability to knock out Newt Gingrich and capture the non-Romney vote. Luckily for Santorum, Newt Gingrich — who routinely appears on several Sunday shows — was absent Sunday and not there to defend himself.
