Rick Santorum had a pretty good week. He finished a distant fourth in the Nevada caucuses, but the turnout was so low–down nearly 25 percent from 2008–that the event became yet another indictment of the front-runner. A Rasmussen poll showed Santorum as the only Republican in the field beating Obama in a head-to-head matchup. And–as if to confirm that Santorum might be seeing some movement–the Romney campaign took time out of its still-continuing assault on Newt (they’re still going after him every day, hard)) to take a shot at Santorum.
In a Sunday press release slugged “RICK SANTORUM: PROUD DEFENDER OF EARMARKS AND PORK-BARREL SPENDING,” the Romney oppo shop dumped a list of 18 news items (dating back to 2003) trying to paint Santorum as a free spendin’, Big Government-lovin’, flip-flopper. As always, irony is tucked away on a high shelf at the Romney campaign.
The good news for Santorum is that if Romney is going negative, he must see you as a threat.
Update (9:47 a.m.): Two more Romney attacks on Santorum have gone out this morning. The first is a “Summary of Santorum’s False Attacks on Massachusettes Health Care” (Romneycare worked great and is nothing like Obamacare!) and the second is a notice that the Romney campaign has scheduled its first conference call with the press to attack Santorum–at noon today Tim Pawlenty will talk about “Santorum’s Long History of Pork-Barrel Spending.”
Perhaps this means that the poll showing Santorum neck-and-neck with Romney in Minnesota is for real.