Rick Santorum and Mitt Romney Even in National Polls

Rick Santorum must be proud of himself, despite a close finish and loss to front runner Mitt Romney in Maine. He has just pulled even with Romney in all the national tracking polls. Romney is trailing in the two areas that he really needs to make up if he is going to get anywhere in the general election. He is losing among the conservative base and among the Tea Party crowd.

Pew research has shown even worse for Romney is that, the survey contains signs that Tea Party opinion of him has worsened over the last few months on two key issues: his conservative credentials and his ideological consistency. Since November, the percentage of Tea Party supporters telling Pew that they do not believe Romney is a strong Republican has grown from 41 percent to 68 percent, and the percent saying Romney does not take consistent positions on the issues has grown from 40 percent to 56 percent.

Santorum surged int he polls after a sweep of Romney in Missouri, Colorado and Minnesota. Santorum has appealed to the Republican base form day 1 and now that he is seen as a contender his support is only increasing.

Romney on the other hand has been linked to gaffe after gaffe. First not wanting to release his tax returns because they showed he parks a lot of his money in tax havens and that he pays less than 20% of his money is capital gains (a rate he wants to slash if he becomes president). Second he said that he was not concerned about America’s poor because they were lucky enough to have food stamps and medicaid and his ridiculous amounts of money that he constantly writes off as being “not so much”.

Do you think Mitt Romney is a good candidate?