Gingrich and Santorum Vow to Fight On Despite Romney’s 6 out of 10 State Victory

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Both Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum vowed to fight on after Super Tuesday.

Story By David A. Fahrenthold Via Washington Post

Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum each won Republican presidential primaries in multiple states on Tuesday night, with Romney narrowly edging his rival in the key state of Ohio after a battle that highlighted stubborn divisions in their party.

Former House speaker Newt Gingrich won the primary in his home state of Georgia, once again reviving his campaign. Rep. Ron Paul of Texas did surprisingly well in a losing effort in Virginia, indicating that the tumultuous four-way GOP race is likely to rumble on for weeks.

Romney beat Santorum by just one percentage point in Ohio, a state that is vital to Republican hopes in November’s general election. Romney had trailed badly there in recent weeks, but rebounded as a result of heavy TV advertising and repeated visits to the state. He also won four states where he faced little opposition: Massachusetts, Virginia, Vermont and Idaho. In the Alaska caucuses, he won with 32.6 percent of the vote, compared to 29 percent for Santorum, 24 percent for Paul and 14.2 percent for Gingrich.

Each victory helped Romney add to his lead in delegates, the tally that will ultimately determine the GOP’s nominee. But the former Massachusetts governor, who has struggled to capture the passion of Republican voters, acknowledged that it could be a struggle for him to clinch the nomination before the Republicans’ nominating convention….

“The Republican Party has to nominate somebody who can talk about the broad vision of what America is,” Santorum told supporters in the small city of Steubenville, Ohio. To beat Obama, he said, “we need a fighter. We need a fighter, and someone who learned what America was about by growing up in communities just like this.” …

Exit polls showed that Gingrich drew significant support from evangelical Christian voters, winning about half of the ballots from that bloc. He also captured more than half of the votes of strong tea party supporters, marking the first time that any candidate has taken a majority of any state’s tea party votes.

In Atlanta, Gingrich took the stage to wrestler Hulk Hogan’s theme song, whose lyrics are: “I am a real American. Fight for the rights of every man.” He then ran through a brief history of his campaign, counting all the times his candidacy had been declared dead — when other candidates had surpassed him as Romney’s main rival. Gingrich said he always came back: “It’s all right. There are lots of bunny rabbits to run through. I’m the tortoise.”

He told the crowd that Romney’s strategy of outspending his opponents would fail against Obama in the general election.

“What you have to have is somebody who knows what they believe, understands how to articulate it so that it cuts through all the media . . . and has the guts to take the president head-on every single time he’s wrong,” Gingrich said.

 

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