Republican presidential front-runner Mitt Romney’s decisive victory in Illinois on Tuesday and the endorsement he picked up Wednesday from former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush signaled to party leaders that it is time to close ranks behind Romney and end the bruising fight over the nomination.
“Primary elections have been held in 34 states,” Bush said. “And now is the time for Republicans to unite behind Gov. Romney and take our message of fiscal conservatism and job creation to all voters this fall.”
But implicit in Bush’s endorsement is the message to Romney’s remaining rivals — former Sen. Rick Santorum, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Rep. Ron Paul — that they need to end their campaigns, something none of them has suggested he’s ready or willing to do. Santorum, in particular, has proven a much more formidable force, nearly upsetting Romney in the Ohio and Michigan primaries and handily defeating the former Massachusetts governor in a series of Southern contests despite being heavily outspent by Romney and his supporters.
Even in the face of a double-digit loss in Illinois, Santorum was vowing to fight on, believing he could beat Romney on Saturday in Louisiana, a conservative state with a significant evangelical population that typically favors Santorum.
Santorum currently leads Romney by 13 percentage points in Louisiana, according to a new Magellan Strategies poll. Moreover, Romney doesn’t plan to spend much time campaigning in Louisiana and hasn’t spent much in advertising there.
“I don’t think Romney has a chance of winning,” Joshua Stockley, a political science professor at the University of Louisiana at Monroe, told The Washington Examiner. “The state very naturally aligns to Rick Santorum in the same fashion as Alabama, Mississippi and Tennessee,” all of which Santorum won.
Romney has struggled to generate much excitement among Republican voters or win over conservatives uncomfortable with his changing positions on issues like abortion. Even when he’s advanced — as he did in Illinois — Romney has suffered avoidable setbacks, often through his own gaffes or miscues in his campaign.
On Tuesday, Romney spokesman Eric Fehrnstrom set off a firestorm of criticism when he said the fall campaign against President Obama would be like an Etch A Sketch that “you can kind of shake up and start over again,” suggesting to conservatives that Romney would track to the left once he secured the nomination.
Santorum seized on the comments, producing his own Etch A Sketch prop to underscore his claims that Romney is not a true conservative but only running as one until the general election.
And while Romney remains far ahead in securing the convention delegates he needs to win the nomination, there’s no quick, easy path to victory as long as Santorum and the others are continuously reminding voters that they are more conservative than Romney.
Despite Romney’s delegate lead and the Bush endorsement, Santorum has no intention of quitting, a top aide, Hogan Gidley, told The Examiner.
Texas, Arkansas, West Virginia, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania are all still in plan, and Santorum can still challenge Romney in all of them, he said.
“Louisiana is a halfway point,” Gidley said. “We are not going to deny the rest of the country a right to vote just because a minority wing of the party decides it is time to wrap this up.”
