IT WAS a bad night for both Mitt Romney and erstwhile chief rival, former House speaker Newt Gingrich. And for all those pundits who have been so keen, so often, to declare the Republican presidential nomination stakes now a one-horse race.
Former Massachusetts Governor Romney still has the edge, but Tuesday’s winner in Missouri, Minnesota and Colorado, former senator from Pennsylvania, Rick Santorum, was yesterday rallying his jubilant troops with a familiar refrain from Gingrich, pledging to take the contest all the way to the Republican convention in Tampa this summer. Speaking in Ohio, where he was campaigning, having more or less abandoned the three states, Gingrich said the results should raise doubts about the notion of Romney’s inexorable march to the nomination.
The three states were natural ground for Santorum, deeply conservative with Tea Party supporters and evangelicals aplenty. But his vote was no mean achievement: four years ago Romney won Colorado and Minnesota as the conservative alternative to the man who won the 2008 Republican nomination, Senator John McCain.
Eclipsing Gingrich, Santorum was yesterday able to stake a claim to the anyone-but-Mitt mantle which, courtesy of a fickle electorate, has moved from shoulder to shoulder like a package in pass-the-parcel. But although he has seized the front, and Gingrich was unable to surpass 13 per cent in the two states he contested, the latter is likely to remain a strong challenger for the conservative vote in March’s Super Tuesday contest which will be their next major test. All grist to the Romney mill.
With Iowa, taken by a hair’s breadth only after a recount, Santorum, a conservative Catholic who has made his name campaigning against abortion and gay marriage, now has won four states of the first eight primaries and caucuses to Romney’s three (although Missouri’s vote was only “indicative” as the state will pick delegates later in the year). Like Gingrich before his recent ascent, he has not yet, however, been the subject of the sort of media scrutiny or negative ads that have been thrown at, and crippled, each of the conservative frontrunners in turn. His turn will come.
Santorum’s challenge will now be quickly to turn the fair wind of his surge into cash and organisation on the ground. On both counts he trails Romney badly. And yesterday a Reuters/Ipsos poll had Romney ahead in the race nationally with 29 per cent, with Santorum’s support up five percentage points in the past month, to 18 per cent. It’s still uphill all the way.