Santorum on the GOP Race: ‘We’re Winning’
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Jay LaPrete/Getty Images(PLAIN CITY, Ohio) — In an interview with ABC News, Rick Santorum declared he is already winning in the battle against Mitt Romney because voters are seeing that Romney’s “values are not the values of the Republican party.”
“We’re winning,” Santorum said. “Whether we end up with the most votes or not [in Ohio], we’re winning.”
In the face of an onslaught of negative ads in Super Tuesday states like Ohio, Santorum has seen his poll numbers steadily decline over the last week. But he insists he is winning by staying competitive with Romney, who, despite a huge financial advantage, has failed to energize Republican voters.
“The problem is they know his values aren’t the values of the people of the Republican Party, as a result they are just sticking by us,” Santorum said.
Accusing Romney of bullying and pounding him in Ohio, Santorum said not even the David and Goliath analogy is enough to describe what he is up against.
“I mean I am being outspent 12 to 1 in Ohio,” Santorum said. “I mean, David and Goliath, I feel that is not even suitable for the amount of pounding that that superPAC — I mean just negative ad after negative ad, 24/7. Yet here we are hanging in this race, and I just think it shows the real weakness of his candidacy.”
Santorum scoffed at suggestions by Romney’s political director that it will soon be mathematically impossible for Santorum to win a majority of Republican delegates needed to capture the nomination.
“How pathetic is that?” Santorum said. “How pathetic is a campaign that keeps saying, ‘we’re inevitable?’ About 10 percent of the delegates have been allocated and they are out there saying, ‘oh he can’t win.’ It’s just pathetic.”
Even if Romney wins a large majority of delegates on Super Tuesday, Santorum says there will be ample opportunity for him to close the gap in the weeks ahead.
“Texas alone is over 10 percent of the delegates you need to win the nomination and we feel very, very good about winning all of those delegates,” Santorum said. “We feel very good about winning Pennsylvania — 72 delegates. You know, we may not win them all, but we’ll win the vast, vast majority of them.”
Santorum also slammed Romney over a recently resurfaced article he wrote in 2009 on the virtues of his Massachusetts health care law.
“This is hopefully another reminder, not just where Mitt Romney stands when things are tough, but you can’t trust him to tell you the truth about what his positions were in the past,” Santorum said of the USA Today article.
“Mitt Romney is for government run health care at the federal level,” Santorum said. “Why would we give that issue away in this election? Why would give away the most central issue, the one that divides so favorably in our direction? Why would we nominate somebody who forfeits that issue? He is the wrong candidate on the most important issue of the day.”
Copyright 2012 ABC News Radio