MANCHESTER, N.H. — After winning the Iowa caucuses by just eight votes, Republican presidential contender Mitt Romney landed in New Hampshire Wednesday determined to hold onto a double-digit lead only to face new attacks from Newt Gingrich, who is trying to regain momentum by assailing Romney for having “very limited appeal in the conservative party.”
The GOP hopefuls made a beeline to New Hampshire a day after a historically close Iowa vote in which Romney barely beat former Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, a conservative whose strong finish gave new life to a lagging campaign.
Greeting Romney was Gingrich, the former House speaker who led the 1994 Republican takeover of the House, who was touting himself as a “genuine conservative” in an open appeal to rank-and-file Republicans who question Romney’s conservatism.
Romney later appeared on stage at a partially filled Manchester high school gym with Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who beat Romney for the Republican presidential nomination in 2008 and who endorsed his one-time opponent.
“New Hampshire is the state that will catapult him to victory in a very short period of time and that is why I’m here,” McCain said.
There was subdued enthusiasm at Romney’s first post-Iowa event in the Granite State. He barely beat Santorum, a candidate who languished in single-digit poll numbers for months, and in Manchester he joked that he hoped to “get more than an eight-vote margin” in New Hampshire’s Jan. 10 primary.
Romney told supporters that as president he would work to make America “a job creating machine again.” In a Romney administration, the health care reform law unpopular with Republicans — reforms based on health care changes Romney instituted in Massachusetts — will be “gone on Day One.”
Santorum, appearing in Brentwood, N.H., late Wednesday, is hoping to capitalize on his come-from-behind success in Iowa. Santorum aides told The Washington Examiner they expect “a huge bump” out of Iowa that could result in “Mitt Romney’s numbers going down.”
Santorum, they said, will continue to engage in the door-to-door politicking that helped him nearly win the Hawkeye State.
New Hampshire Republican political strategist Patrick Hynes said Santorum will probably get that bump, but it won’t be enough to keep his campaign alive.
“He has to compete with Newt Gingrich for the not-Romney vote, and Gingrich has the powerful New Hampshire Union Leader on his side,” Hynes said of Gingrich’s endorsement by the state’s largest newspaper.
Gingrich, who finished fourth in the caucuses, on Wednesday assailed Romney and Iowa third-place finisher Ron Paul, both of whom helped kill a Gingrich surge with a flurry of attack ads. Gingrich, who once said he wouldn’t criticize rivals, had no trouble criticizing the two by name when he met with reporters following his Concord speech.
“Romney ran a relentlessly negative campaign of falsehoods,” Gingrich said. “And the fact is that three out of four Republicans rejected him. He can’t even break out in his own party.”
But New Hampshire has a larger base of moderate voters and a strong affinity for the former governor of neighboring Massachusetts. They also view Romney as the most electable.
“He’s the one who can win beyond any other candidate out there,” Manchester real estate agent Francine Grenier-Proulx said after hearing Romney speak. “It was pretty close in Iowa, but he did win.”
