Romney rivals unite in bid to thwart him

REPUBLICAN rivals of presidential frontrunner Mitt Romney have urged the party faithful to nominate somebody with a greater chance of opposing President Barack Obama.

Attacking Romney for being too timid and too moderate, others seeking the part nomination called on Republicans to do themselves a favour and nominate a more conservative standard-bearer.

“The only way Republicans lose is if we screw this up and nominate another moderate who has taken multiple positions on every major issue of our time,” former senator Rick Santorum told supporters at a fundraising appeal.

Former House speaker Newt Gingrich predicted that Romney could not win the nomination and said that even if he did, his performance against Obama in the campaign debates would get little more than a laugh from the president.

Gingrich said Romney would win New Hampshire but that one of the former Massachusetts governor’s Republican rivals would “eventually emerge as the conservative alternative and will beat Romney”.

Romney had harsh words of his own, but for Obama, whom he called a “crony capitalist” and “a job killer”.

Romney is the favourite to win Tuesday’s New Hampshire primary, so much so that he was campaigning for a second day in South Carolina, where voters are not due to cast primary ballots for two weeks. He appeared yesterday with South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley and Senator John McCain, the 2008 Republican presidential nominee, two local favourites who have urged conservatives to support Romney as party nominee.

Santorum, who pulled within a handful of votes behind Romney in Iowa’s caucuses, was likely to find a welcome audience among South Carolina conservatives and so remained in New Hampshire to try to maintain the momentum he earned from Iowa. Jon Huntsman, who bypassed Iowa to bet his campaign on a good finish in New Hampshire, was showing off an endorsement by The Boston Globe, Romney’s hometown paper.

“Don’t settle for less than America needs,” Santorum asked those expected to vote in New Hampshire’s first- in-the-nation primary.

Without saying so, he and the other candidates appeared to share a common objective — hold down Romney’s vote in New Hampshire, then knock him off stride in the first Southern primary of the year.

Romney benefited from having several rivals split the vote in Iowa, where his winner’s share was 25%.

Yesterday, he picked up the endorsement of conservative leader Bay Buchanan, whose brother Pat won the New Hampshire primary in 1996. Bay Buchanan cast Romney as a “real conservative” who could get things done.

Also vying to emerge as Romney’s chief rival were Texans Ron Paul and Rick Perry.

“We can’t afford to have a status quo president,” Huntsman said in Durham, New Hampshire. “We can’t afford to have a coronation for president.”

Huntsman made hay out of winning the Globe’s endorsement. It was the second time Massachusetts’ largest newspaper had snubbed Romney ahead of the New Hampshire primary.

Gingrich unveiled a television commercial aimed at voters in New Hampshire and South Carolina that cited one review of Romney’s jobs programme as timid and nearly identical in part to the president’s.

“Timid won’t create jobs. And timid certainly won’t defeat Barack Obama,” the ad said.

Ironically, in a year in which polls show the economy is overwhelmingly the top issue for voters, the first two contests are in states with low joblessness — 5.7% in Iowa and 5.4% in New Hampshire.

That all changes a week later.

South Carolina’s unemployment was 9.9% in November, according to the Bureau of Labour Statistics, worse than 41 other states and more than a full percentage point higher than the national average.

Santorum managed to criticise Romney and most of the other Republicans in the race in the space of a few sentences.

“I’ve never been for government-run healthcare,” he said in a swipe at both Romney and Gingrich. “I’m not for no regulation, I’m not a libertarian,” he added, a jab at Paul.