WASHINGTON — Mitt Romney has taken three states while his closest rival, Rick Santorum, has snagged two on so-called Super Tuesday, the biggest single day in the Republican presidential race and one the front-runner was hoping would catapult him beyond the reach of his opponents.
Romney crushed the competition in Massachusetts, where he served as governor for four years, and also handily won Virginia and Vermont. Santorum, meantime, won Tennessee and Oklahoma, where his stances on hot-button issues play well with both states’ Christian evangelical voters.
“We have won in the West, the Midwest and the South and we’re ready to win across this country,” Santorum said in a victory speech after taking his two states, pointing out that Romney vastly overspent him in every jurisdiction.
“In every case, we overcame the odds.”
Romney addressed supporters in Boston in a victory speech on his win in Massachusetts.
“I’m not going to let you down; I’m going to get this nomination,” he told the crowd. “We’re going to take your vote, this huge vote in Massachusetts, and take that victory all the way to the White House.”
He acknowledged that the path to Super Tuesday hadn’t been easy.
“It’s been a long road getting to Super Tuesday, I’ve got to be honest,” he said before proceeding to congratulate Santorum and Newt Gingrich on their own successes.
Romney, indeed, was looking to clear a significant hurdle on Super Tuesday in his dash to secure the presidential nomination while Santorum hoped some electoral triumphs would revive his flagging campaign and keep him nipping at the front-runner’s heels.
But neither Santorum nor Gingrich, who handily took his home state of Georgia, were on the ballot in Virginia, limiting opportunities for both to gain ground, who took 58 per cent of the vote according to early, unofficial results. Ron Paul won 43 per cent.
Gingrich, who served Georgia as a U.S. congressman for two decades, easily took the state with 45 per cent of the vote, according to preliminary, unofficial results.
The former speaker of the House of Representatives, however, wasn’t expected to win the other nine states. Nonetheless, Gingrich suggested the Georgia win portended future victories in a tweet that spoke of impending “March momentum.”
“This is amazing,” he said in Georgia in a typical Gingrich victory speech, snidely chastising “the elite” of the media, the punditry and the Republican party who have repeatedly written off his campaign.
“The national elites, especially Republicans, had decided a Gingrich candidacy was so frightening they had to kill it,” he said, reiterating his belief that his debating skills would make him the best candidate to take on U.S. President Barack Obama.
As results poured in, however, former Alaska governor Sarah Palin made news by telling CNN that she’d be willing to step into the race in the event that no one has secured the nomination by the party convention in August.
“As I said, anything is possible and I don’t close any doors that would be open out there,” said Palin, the former vice-presidential candidate who has a contract with Fox News, in her most definitive response to the question. “I wouldn’t close that door.”
Romney, meantime, who trailed Santorum in blue-collar Ohio for most of February, was neck-and-neck with the former Pennsylvania senator in early reporting in the Rust Belt state. A loss in Ohio for either man would represent a crushing blow.
With more than 400 delegates at stake in the 10 states, Super Tuesday represents a significant chunk of the 1,144 needed to secure the nomination.
Georgia, Ohio, Virginia, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Vermont, Massachusetts, Idaho, North Dakota and Alaska all held nominating contests.
Libertarian Paul was making a serious bid for Idaho, a state with a long history of libertarianism. Even Romney’s second cousin, Chad Romney, said this week he was casting his ballot for Paul in the state.
Romney headed into Super Tuesday with momentum after eking out a victory over Santorum last week in Michigan, the state where the Mormon millionaire was born and raised. He also easily won Arizona’s winner-takes-all contest, and was victorious in Saturday’s caucuses in Washington state too.
Santorum’s campaign surged after he won a trio of contests in the Midwest in early February.
On the campaign trail on Tuesday, Romney kept a disdainful focus on Obama, penning an editorial in the Washington Post that portrayed him as weak on foreign policy before assailing him again to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.
“The president speaks of common interests. Let me be very clear about this: We do not have common interests with a terrorist regime,” Romney said to applause.
“It is profoundly irrational to suggest that the ayatollahs think the way we do or share our values. They do not.”
Santorum addressed the conference too, saying Iran has no reason to take the U.S. seriously when Obama talks of waiting for sanctions to work.
“From everything I’ve seen from the conduct of this administration, he has turned his back on the people of Israel,” he said.
Republicans have been trying to woo Jewish voters, who cast their ballots overwhelmingly for Obama in 2008, by accusing him of being weak on Iran.
At a rare news conference at the White House later in the day, Obama fired back.
“Those folks don’t have a lot of responsibilities,” Obama said, adding their actual policies on what to do about Iran were strikingly similar to his own.
“If some of these folks think that it’s time to launch a war they should say so, and they should explain to the American people exactly why they would do that and what the consequences would be. Everything else is just talk.”
When asked what he had to say to Romney in the wake of his attacks, Obama replied to laughter from the White House press corps: “Good luck tonight. Really.”