Santorum Hits Gingrich, Romney to Kick Off Florida Swing
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Steve Pope/Getty Images(CORAL SPRINGS, Fla.) — Rick Santorum began his Florida swing on Sunday, a day after his third-place finish in the South Carolina primary, at a rally outside of a traditional GOP campaign stop in Coral Springs.
In front of an enthusiastic crowd of 200 people that interrupted him several times with cheers of “Rick, Rick, Rick,” he said: “We are going to campaign all up and down the state of Florida.”
During the rally, Santorum hit both Newt Gingrich, who won the first-in-the-South primary on Saturday, and Mitt Romney, who placed second.
“Trust is a big issue in this election,” he said. “Who do you trust is going to do what they say they are going to do?”
“You look at the record of someone who was the governor of Massachusetts and, well, didn’t necessarily govern all that conservatively,” Santorum said, before introducing a new attack on Gingrich.
“You look at someone who was speaker of the House, and again, these are friends, I know they are good people, but when Newt was speaker of the House, well, within three years the conservatives within the House of Representatives tried to throw him out, and in the fourth year they did. Why? Because he wasn’t governing as a conservative,” Santorum said. “He didn’t live up to all the hype.”
Santorum, standing on a stage in a strip mall parking lot outside of Wings Plus, said he was the “conservative firebrand” other Republicans would come to if they needed help with legislation.
“We were the one standing up and fighting,” Santorum said. “I was the go-to guy.”
“It’s great to be glib, but it’s best to be principled. It’s better to have all of your ducks in a row,” Santorum said. “It’s better to have someone of principal, someone who has been there, someone who’s not afraid when they are getting accused of being intolerant or whatever the case may be stands up and says, ‘I’m not, I’m not and I believe what I did was right.’”
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