Rick Santorum says, Mitt Romney paid for CPAC votes......

Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum today implied that Mitt Romney paid for votes in the Conservative Political Action Conference straw poll on Saturday, where Romney beat Santorum 38 percent to 31 percent.

 

Santorum, asked about the straw poll on CNN’s Face the Nation, said in past years, Texas Representative Ron Paul won because he trucked in supporters and paid for their tickets. (Paul did not address the convention this year.) “The Romney campaign, how many tickets they’ve bought, we’ve heard all sorts of things,” Santorum said.

Asked by host Candy Crowley to clarify if he was told that the Romney campaign paid for votes, Santorum responded that it is standard procedure to recruit people and give them free tickets. “We don’t think it’s a good use of our resources,” Santorum said. “Governor Romney obviously may have a different idea.”

 

The New York Times blog The Caucus reported that the Romney campaign bussed in students from Eastern Seaboard colleges. Romney spokesman Ryan Williams said, “Rick Santorum has a history of making statements that aren’t grounded in the truth. Yesterday Mitt Romney not only won the CPAC straw poll but also a separate nationwide survey of conservatives conducted by CPAC organizers and the Maine caucuses. Conservative voters recognize that in order to change Washington we need a Republican nominee who isn’t a creature of Washington like Rick Santorum.”

 

Santorum, in several Sunday TV appearances, sought to downplay the straw poll and the non-binding Maine caucuses, which concluded Saturday and which Romney won with 39 percent of the vote, followed by Paul with 35 percent and Santorum with 17 percent. Santorum said on ABC’s This Week that he did not compete in Maine, but intends to do well in Michigan and Arizona, which hold primaries Feb. 28. He is also campaigning in Washington, Idaho, and North Dakota, which vote in early March.

Santorum told NBC’s Meet the Press that he raised $3 million in the past week, after winning non-binding contests on Tuesday in Minnesota, Colorado, and Missouri.

Santorum said on ABC that he would release his tax returns in the next couple of days, possibly as early as tomorrow.

 

Santorum also indicated how he would respond to several likely lines of attack. In his 2006 Senate race, which he lost, Santorum ran an ad highlighting the work he did with Democrats when he was a Pennsylvania senator, including with senator and now secretary of state Hillary Clinton. He ran another ad highlighting his efforts to raise the minimum wage and fund Amtrak. Santorum recently criticized Romney for a proposal that would tie the minimum wage to inflation.

 

Santorum said on CNN that the work he did with Democrats was only on policies that were consistent with his values – such as protecting children on the internet. On the minimum wage, Santorum said he opposes Romney’s proposal, along with anything else that would “be an inflator of wages.” But he supports having a minimum wage and ensuring it does not dip too low. He said he supported Amtrak when he was representing Pennsylvania, since Amtrak was important to the state. But given today’s difficult economic times, Santorum said, “Amtrak is something that should not be funded by the federal level.”

 

On NBC, Santorum stood by comments he made that were critical of placing women in front-line combat, noting that there are physiological differences between men and women. He also defended a section of his 2005 book, “It Takes a Family,” where he wrote that “radical feminism” has pressured women to work outside the home. Santorum said he wrote that section with his wife, who left jobs as a nurse and a lawyer to raise their children. “A lot of moms out there, who did step away from the workforce, feel their choices are not as respected as those who continue in the workplace,” Santorum said.