Fresh blow for Romney as rival takes three in a row
Mitt Romney suffered a fresh blow in his lacklustre campaign for the Republican presidential nomination yesterday after a triple defeat to Rick Santorum as the contest reached America's mid-western heartland.
The former Massachusetts governor was beaten in Minnesota, Missouri and Colorado by Mr Santorum, the figurehead of the party's evangelical right wing.
At a rally in Missouri, Mr Santorum pledged to wrest the nomination from Mr Romney.
"I don't stand here to claim to be the conservative alternative to Mitt Romney," the former Pennsylvania senator told supporters. "I stand here to be the conservative alternative to Barack Obama."
The results mean that after the contest's first eight votes, Mr Santorum has won four states to Mr Romney's three. Newt Gingrich, the former House Speaker, has won one.
Conceding that it had been "a good night for Senator Santorum", a defiant Mr Romney told a rally in Colorado: "I expect to become our nominee with your help."
Aides claimed that he had chosen to ignore the "beauty contest" of the primary in Missouri, which awards candidates their delegates to the party convention in a separate process.
However, the results in the Minnesota and Colorado caucuses are likely to reflect closely the final delegate tallies there.
The loss of Colorado, a state Mr Romney won easily during his failed 2008 nomination bid and where he was rated 10 points in the lead by opinion polls a day earlier, was a sharp blow to his team.
Mr Romney failed to win a single county in either Minnesota or Missouri. In Minnesota, a moderate state that he also won comfortably in 2008, he finished third behind Ron Paul, a Texas congressman, and 28 points behind Mr Santorum. In Missouri, he lost by 30 points.
Eight votes in, he has now won and lost precisely the same states as did Hillary Clinton -- who had been widely assumed to secure her party's nomination -- during the early stages of her doomed campaign for the Democratic presidential candidacy in 2008. (© Daily Telegraph, London)
- Jon Swaine in Washington
Irish Independent
