Rick Santorum Dropping out of Republican Primary Race
Former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum has decided to drop out of the race to be the Republican nominee for president. Santorum had recently taken a break from the campaign trail to be with his ailing daughter, Bella. Recent poll numbers show him trailing in the Pennsylvania primary which is coming up shortly. He called Mitt Romney to let him know the news earlier in the day. Santorum is expected to make the official announcement at speech in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.
With Santorum out, Mitt Romney will now certainly be the Republican nominee. His win in Wisconsin sealed it with most pundits, but now there is no one left standing who can truly challenge him. Newt Gingrich’s campaign is facing a huge debt. Ron Paul has failed to win a single state. The battle between Mitt Romney and President Obama can now begin in earnest.
Santorum came out of nowhere to emerge as the top challenger to Romney. The former senator polled in single digits for most of 2011. A grassroots campaign in Iowa led to him winning the opening caucuses of the primary season. From there he battled Newt Gingrich for the “Anti-Romney” vote. He failed to gain enough traction to topple Romney mostly because Gingrich refused to leave the race and ended up splitting the conservative vote.
We are left with a general election campaign that will boast two moderate candidates. Despite their opponents claiming that each are extremely partisan, both Romney and Obama have governed in the middle. During campaign season they have moved slightly off center to win over base voters, but both are expected to return to the middle for the general election. Obama is likely to peg Romney as an out of touch elitist, while Romney is likely to condemn Obama’s stewardship of the economy.
Due to the Citizens United Supreme Court decision of 2010, this election is expected to be the most expensive in history. The costs of elections have been scaling up for years, but this year’s election figures to jump exponentially in price. Conservatives hatred of President Obama figures to make this one ugly election as well. The latest polling shows President Obama with a lead over Romney right now, but this race figures to tighten in the coming weeks and is expected to be very close.
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The North Mobile Post was founded in April of 2011. The site serves as a blog covering Mobile County as well as news from around the world.
