HOLLIS, NH — Speaking outside a barn in which Rick Santorum was addressing an overflow crowd at a town meeting, a top Santorum aide says GOP frontrunner Mitt Romney “is starting to come across as a bully.”
Asked whether Santorum fears that Restore Our Future, a pro-Romney super PAC, will run attack ads against Santorum should Santorum continue to surge in the Republican race, senior adviser John Brabender suggested Romney’s attacks might backfire in the future.
“I think Romney has a problem with this whole negative stuff,” Brabender said. “One is that he’s gotten Newt Gingrich awfully mad. And I don’t know if I’d want Newt Gingrich mad at me.”
“But number two is that Romney is starting to come across as a bully,” Brabender continued. “Everybody understands that he has all these friends who can write big checks and they hide behind a super PAC, and they run negative ads. And that comes across as the rich kid who shows up showing you all the toys he has and then, when you’re not looking, takes yours away. And I think that that starts to smell bad to people when they see a candidate that’s going to run that type of relentless, negative barrage and feels that’s the best way to get elected.”
Ads run in Iowa by Restore Our Future, along with those by rival candidate Ron Paul, hurt Gingrich’s chances in the recent caucus, and also provoked Gingrich into intemperate reactions that further hurt his prospects with some Republican voters. Romney himself is expected to be a target of attacks from all sides at debates Saturday night and Sunday morning in Manchester, two days before New Hampshire voters go to the polls.
