The battle between Republican presidential hopefuls Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum to win the Michigan Feb. 28 primary is tightening -- and getting nastier.
Two polls released Tuesday show different winners. Last week, Santorum led Romney --who won the Michigan Republican primary back in 2008 and whose father was governor of the state during the 1960s --in a series of polls of the Great Lakes State.
A Rasmussen Reports poll of likely primary voters released on Tuesday finds Santorum leading in Michigan with 38 percent. Romney places second with 34 percent. Ron Paul stands in third with 10 percent followed by Newt Gingrich with 9 percent. One percent back other candidates, while 8 percent remain undecided.
The poll of 750 likely Republican primary voters was taken Feb. 20 and had a margin of error of +/- 4 percent.
But a Mitchell/Rosetta Stone poll of likely Michigan primary voters, also unveiled Tuesday, finds Romney ahead.
Romney takes 32 percent of this poll followed by Santorum with 30 percent, Gingrich with 9 percent and Paul trailing with 7 percent. Twenty-two percent say they are undecided. Mitchell/Rosetta Stone polls released earlier in the month found Santorum leading by as much as 15 percent.
The poll of 420 likely Michigan Republican primary voters was taken on Feb. 20 and had a margin of error of +/- 4.7 percent.
Meanwhile, the attacks are flying in the race. Andrea Saul, a spokeswoman for Romney, hammered Santorum for his years in Congress and the Senate -- and for contrasting his record with her candidates.
Republican primary voters have a clear choice, Saul insisted. Mitt Romney spent his career helping turn around companies, the Olympics, and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. At the same time, Congressman/Senator Rick Santorum spent his career in Washington, voting repeatedly to increase the debt ceiling and his own pay. If business as usual in Washington is the problem, Rick Santorum cant be part of the solution.
Saul also lumped in Gingrich with Santorum later in the day.
Republican primary voters may be surprised to learn that Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum have a lot in common, Saul said. Among other similarities, they are both career politicians who were removed from office by those who knew them best and chose to stay in D.C. afterward. Mitt Romney offers something different. He is not a creature of Washington. He offers the kind of private-sector and chief executive experience that career politicians cant match.
The team behind Santorum returned fire on Romney, attacking the former Massachusetts governor for his record on environmental issues.
Government health-care mandates, the big bank bailout and governmental takeover of religious freedoms are just a few of the issues where Mitt Romney has joined Barack Obama, said Hogan Gidley, a spokesman for Santorum. And now we find out that radical environmentalism is no different. Governor Romney actually bought into and even supported the radical environmentalists' movement to pass job-crushing 'cap and tax' legislation. Studies show that if Mitt Romney had his way, and his legislation would've been passed nationwide -- for Michigan -- as many as 90,800 jobs would've been lost.
Gidley contrasted his take on Romneys record with Santorums.
Rick Santorum has never bought into the radical left's junk science, and has instead stood by the revolutionary American doctrine based on free people and free markets, Gidley insisted. Rick Santorum has stood up for opening the tundra of the North Slope of Alaska for drilling, exploring for natural gas, and expediting the approval of the Keystone pipeline. The memory of his coal-mining grandfather instilled in him the ideal that America can use its bare hands to dig for greatness, and he firmly believes that our industrial base can be great again."
Reach Kevin Derby at kderby@sunshinestatenews.com or at (850) 727-0859.
