In an embarrassment for Mitt Romney, Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine (R) switched his support to Rick Santorum on Friday with a brutal speech condemning Romney for failing to run a positive campaign.
“Let’s be honest,” DeWine said. “In the past months, Mitt Romney and his Super PAC have coupled a remarkable ability to tear down his opponents with an astounding inability to provide voters with a rationale to support him.”
DeWine, who lost his Senate seat in the same 2006 Democratic wave that swept out Santorum, told a crowd in Ohio on Friday that he had suffered though “sleepless nights” after endorsing Romney in October, as he realized that he had made a mistake.
“I could not continue to be on record endorsing Governor Romney when I knew in my heart that Rick Santorum was the best candidate,” he said, “when I knew in my heart that Rick Santorum had by far the best chance of beating Barack Obama, which is what we absolutely have to do.”
While he praised Santorum’s values and electability in his endorsement, he singled out Romney’s emphasis on attacks against his opponents in particular as a key reason for his surprise turnaround.
“To be elected president you have to do more than tear down your opponent, you have to give the American people a reason to vote for you…you have to give them a reason to hope and a reason to believe that under your leadership America will truly be better,” DeWine said. “Rick Santourm has done that. Sadly, Governor Romney has not.”
In a thinly veiled shot at Romney, who has a reputation for being awkward and aloof, he also played up Santorum as a more relatable politician.
“People like him,” he said. “He is human. He’s real.”
The whole speech was quite the leap from just a few months earlier in October, when DeWine wrote in a brief endorsement on Facebook that Romney “understands what it takes to create and maintain jobs.”
Top Romney supporters held a conference call shortly before the DeWine endorsement in which former NH Gov. John Sununu dismissed the move as “not a significant thing” given what he said was the Ohio Republican’s lack of a major political organization behind him.
Foreshadowing DeWine’s speech just minutes, Sununu also ripped into Santorum for failing to meet the requirements to get on the ballot in the Virginia primary.
“There tends to be a basic level of the test of competence in running for president, the ability to get on the ballot everywhere to reflect on how you can govern as president,” he said. “Senator Santorum has looked to his record as a consultant and everyone knows you don’t hire a consultant to run your company. You interview a consultant, you take their advice, throw out half of it and then you turn to managers like Gov. Romney to get the work done and to choose what needs to be done.”
Noting that DeWine had endorsed Tim Pawlenty before the former Minnesota governor dropped out of the race, Romney spokesman Eric Fehrnstrom suggested his support was easy to come by.
‘Mike DeWine makes his third endorsement in six months — Pawlenty, Romney, and now Santorum. I think that’s a record,” he tweeted.
Considering the departed Pawlenty is now Romney’s national campaign chair, it’s kind of an odd message.
