Romney, Santorum share Super Tuesday momentum

Mitt Romney padded his delegate count on the biggest night of the GOP presidential primary season but Rick Santorum demonstrated enough strength to ensure that there’s more convulsion ahead as Republicans struggle to settle on a candidate to take on President Barack Obama.

Super Tuesday gave Romney a narrow victory in pivotal Ohio, a home-state win in Massachusetts, and triumphs in Idaho, Vermont, Alaska, and Virginia. But it was no knock-out punch.

Santorum, for his part, won Oklahoma, Tennessee and North Dakota, and Newt Gingrich picked up his home state of Georgia.

“This was a big night tonight,” Santorum said. “We have won in the West, the Midwest and the South, and we’re ready to win across this country.”

The split decision refreshed questions about Romney’s appeal to conservatives in some of the most Republican states in the nation. The best-funded and best-organized of the four Republican candidates, Romney vowed to press on.

“Tomorrow, we wake up and we start again,” he told supporters. “And the next day, we’ll do the same. And so we’ll go, day by day, step by step, door by door, heart to heart.”

House Republican Leader Eric Cantor of Virginia, a Romney supporter, said Wednesday that Romney’s claim to the nomination is inevitable, adding that Santorum and Gingrich “have not demonstrated an ability to do what needs to be done.” But in a morning interview on CBS “This Morning,” Cantor acknowledged there is still plenty of ongoing debate in “a robust party with many ideas.”

Obama chose the busiest day of the GOP race to speak from the presidential bully pulpit, where he dismissed the Republicans’ almost constant criticism of his administration.

“Those folks don’t have a lot of responsibilities,” Obama said in a White House news conference. “They’re not commander in chief.”

Gingrich’s win in Georgia, which he represented for several terms in Congress, was his first victory since he captured the South Carolina primary on Jan. 21. The former House speaker said it would propel him on yet another comeback,

Texas Rep. Ron Paul, still in search of his first victory of the nomination battle, had pinned his hopes on winning Idaho and Alaska but fell short in both.

Ohio was the marquee matchup, and for good reason. No Republican has won the presidency without carrying the state in the general election. It was a second industrial-state showdown in as many weeks between Romney and Santorum and drew the most campaigning and television advertisements of the 10 Super Tuesday states.

With 99 percent of Ohio precincts reporting, Romney had 38 percent to Santorum’s 37 percent, an uncomfortably close margin for a candidate who had spent nearly four times as much money as his rival in the state.