Santorum's Loss to Romney in Illinois is his Own Fault Because he Keeps Putting his Foot in his Mouth

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Mar 20|22:42

For once, Mitt Romney didn't win ugly.

Inthe latest in a series of showdowns with Rick Santorum, Romney easily won the Illinois primary on Tuesday, padding his delegate lead and quieting, at least for the moment, a wave of noisy doubts about his candidacy. Romney was winning just under half the vote with more than 40percent counted.

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Of course, the former Massachusettsgovernor badly outspent Santorum in the big-state contest, which playedto his organizational strengths; the underfunded Santorum didn't even file a full delegate slate. And Santorum hurt himself with a series of verbal stumbles, including one in which he declared that he didn't care about the unemployment rate--allowing Romney to insist that he, of course, cares very much.

Illinoisalso represented a new low for Newt Gingrich, who was struggling to getinto double digits and has increasingly been marginalized by the media as his prospects fade. At the moment, Gingrich has more debt than cash on hand.

Inhis speech, Romney tried out a new theme for a slowly recovering economy, that President Obama doesn't realize "the American economy is fueled by freedom." He rattled off disconnected examples of federal regulators purportedly hindering entrepreneurs, from oil drilling and coal mining to telling farmers "what their kinds can do on the farm." (He did not explain.) The fine print doesn't always hold up--the administration has tripled the number of operating oil rigs--but it gave Romney a rhetorical lift he is usually lacking.

Romney finished with a litany of "I see an America" lines that, for him, was a mighty flourish. "I see an America where poverty is defeated by opportunity, not enabled by a government check."

He said Obama's job-killing bureaucrats are "crushing the dream and the dreamers" and that "our economic freedom will be on the ballot"--an obvious attempt by Romney to connect his Mr. Fixit talk to a loftier goal that resonates with conservatives.

Santorum practically accused Romney of plagiarism in the speech that followed, standing in front of a banner emblazoned with a single word: freedom. He said sarcastically he was "pleased" that Romney was "adopting" that message. Indeed, Santorum hit some of the same notes, although in less scripted fashion ("a government that's trying to dictate how we live our lives...trample our freedom"). But he also took a series of swipes at his rival, saying Romneycare and Obamacare are "indistinguishable," and finished with an emotional appeal to "saddle up" like Ronald Reagan and carry the "torch of freedom."

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SOURCE: Howard Kurtz, The Daily Beast