Free Republic

"Smart people" in America will never back conservative Republicans, or so says Rick Santorum – a conservative Republican whose verbal missteps are becoming as well-known as his hardline posturing on social issues. Santorum, who ended up being Mitt Romney's closest rival for the 2012 Republican nomination, made the comment at the conservative Value Voters Summit in Washington. "We will never have the media on our side, ever, in this country. We will never have the elite, smart people on our side," Santorum said in a speech to the gathering of conservative activists at a Washington hotel. Santorum, a former Pennsylvania...

WASHINGTON –  Former presidential hopeful Rick Santorum urged his supporters to back fellow Republican Mitt Romney's campaign Monday in a late-night email that ignored that Santorum once calling Romney the "worst Republican in the country" during their bitter contest. He added: "Above all else, we both agree that President Obama must be defeated. The task will not be easy. It will require all hands on deck if our nominee is to be victorious. Gov. Romney will be that nominee and he has my endorsement and support to win this the most critical election of our lifetime."

WASHINGTON (AP) — Rick Santorum is endorsing his one-time bitter rival Mitt Romney in a late-night e-mail to his supporters. Santorum on Monday urged his supporters to join him in working with the effective Republican nominee to deny President Barack Obama a second term.

Former presidential candidate Rick Santorum on Monday sounded no closer to endorsing Mitt Romney than when he dropped out of the race last week, telling supporters on a conference call that he hasn’t even had a chance to speak to his onetime rival. Santorum said he has talked with former House Speaker Newt Gingrich. “I haven't had a chance yet to talk to Governor Romney, but we'll be talking to both of them and we’re going to go out and do what we believe is in the best interest of our country,” Santorum said in the call, which had at...

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...

The organization that ignited the tea party as a national mass movement gave Mitt Romney perhaps his biggest victory yet, deciding to drop its opposition to his candidacy, a top executive in the group told The Washington Times. FreedomWorks, which organized the Sept. 12, 2009, mass demonstration on the Mall, says that while it will not give an explicit endorsement, the time has come for Republicans to unite around the former Massachusetts governor and focus on defeating President Obama. “It is a statistical fact that the numbers favor Mitt Romney,” FreedomWorks Vice President Russ Walker told The Times on Tuesday....

The Santorum campaign appears to be taking a slightly new tack on Newt Gingrich’s continued presence in the race. Instead of calling on Mr. Gingrich to drop out of the race, they called for Mr. Gingrich’s supporters to come to their side. “It’s time for Gingrich supporters to get behind us if they truly want to have a conservative candidate; it’s up to Newt Gingrich to decide what his future is,” John Brabender, Mr. Santorum’s top strategist, told reporters after Mr. Santorum and a crowd of about 200 people had left the hotel ballroom here where Mr. Santorum had conceded...

Newt Gingrich had to win Mississippi and Alabama in order to remain a viable candidate. Those states weren't essential because of their delegate counts or their importance to the national election, but because Gingrich had won nothing outside the South and staked everything on a southern strategy. He lost. He remains in the campaign, but he's a ghost, a bitter aftertaste, and a thorn in Rick Santorum's side. Santorum now faces his own "must win" primary, Illinois. He's won more states than Gingrich, but his strength so far has been in the Midwest and South, and in neither region has...

(CBS News) BILOXI, Miss. - The four main candidates for the Republican nomination for president say they're committed to staying in the race right up to the convention this August in Tampa, Fla. There's just one problem: If they do, it might turn out that no one gets the number of delegates needed to win the nomination outright. Stumping in Birmingham, Alabama, Mitt Romney continued his Southern charm offensive, celebrating an endorsement from the country band Alabama. "Wouldn't you love to hear them sing 'Sweet Home Alabama'? Wouldn't that be wonderful?" he asked a crowd at one campaign stop. In...

ROMNEY CAMPAIGN DRAGGED DOWN BY BIG BOATLOAD OF DELEGATESRead More » March 7, 2012   Mitt Romney won more than twice as many delegates on Super Tuesday as Newt Gingrich or Rick Santorum. The Non-Fox Media's take-away is that Romney suffered a major setback Tuesday night.      No matter what happens, Barack Obama's boosters in the NFM portray it as a debilitating blow to Romney. On Nov. 7, The New York Times' headline will be: "Romney ekes out narrow electoral victory, leaving race uncertain."      To explain the widening gulf in delegates won by Romney compared to the others...

In 2008 when my wife, Gena, and I were on the campaign trail backing former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee for president, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum was fighting to get former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney elected. (Listen in this video how Santorum passionately endorsed and elevated Mitt in his bid for the Oval Office.) Just three years ago in his interview with radio host and conservative commentator Laura Ingraham, Santorum also emphatically told millions of listening Americans: “If you’re a conservative, if you’re a Republican, there is only one place to go, and that’s Mitt Romney.” Why an alleged conservative...