Free Republic

By the time Mitt Romney arrives in Wisconsin Friday – his first campaign stop in the state before its GOP primary on Tuesday – his challenger Rick Santorum will have already become a familiar face. Mr. Santorum has been in Wisconsin since last weekend and has dined, bowled, and played shuffleboard with residents in every pocket of the state. He’s even tossed a football at Lambeau Field, home of the Green Bay Packers. Santorum’s once-generous lead in Wisconsin is eroding. In February, the former US senator polled at 34 percent among the state’s likely Republican voters, while Mr. Romney, the...

GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum on Thursday took GOP frontrunner Mitt Romney to task for his past as a self-described “independent” who claimed he did not want to “return to the days of Reagan-Bush. Santorum, speaking to supporters at the Jelly Belly factory – which had honored President Ronald Reagan in the past for promoting the jelly bean – asked which candidate would be pull together the “Reagan coalition” and win swings states, which are “vitally important” for winning the presidential election.(Snip) “Governor Romney said that after the Etch-a-Sketch flap that he was going to run as a conservative in...

April will be a tough month for Rick Santorum. The primary schedule has nine contests next month ... three on Tuesday, a non-binding caucus in Missouri (again!), and five primaries on the 24th. The two most likely states for a Santorum win are winner-take-all Wisconsin on the 3rd and the candidate's home state of Pennsylvania on the 24th. Santorum trails in the latest Wisconsin polling, and a new poll by Frank & Marshall College suggests that his support back home has declined significantly: Rick Santorum appeared to be the Republican presidential candidate to beat in Pennsylvania a month ago.With the...