This article is from the source 'guardian' and was first published or seen on . It last changed over 40 days ago and won't be checked again for changes.

You can find the current article at its original source at http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/mar/19/mitt-romney-illinois-us-elections-live

The article has changed 9 times. There is an RSS feed of changes available.

Version 7 Version 8
Mitt Romney looks to Illinois after winning Puerto Rico – US elections live Mitt Romney looks to Illinois after winning Puerto Rico – as it happened
(40 minutes later)
5.38pm: A quick word about what's at stake in tomorrow's race in Illinois, in which the latest polling has Mitt Romney sailing to victory on strong support in the Chicago area.
/>Whatever happens in Illinois, Rick Santorum faces something of a voting desert before the campaign returns to a state he's pretty sure he can win – his home state of Pennsylvania. The exception is Wisconsin on Tuesday, April 3; polling last month put Santorum ahead there, but that was before the Romney campaign turned its attention – and money – to the race.
/>As for that voting desert: April holds five races in states on the East Coast, plus the District of Columbia. That's Romney territory, and the front runner can be counted on to brag about the delegates he racks up in places like New York (95 delegates at stake) on April 24. By the end of April, Mitt Romney could look strong.
/>How the dynamic shapes up depends on what happens tomorrow night in Illinois. A surprise Santorum win could mean a longer stay for the Repulican candidates in their primary purgatory. 		10.00am: Illinois votes tomorrow, the Obama campaign raises cash, Romney to speak on economy, Santorum is in rally mode – welcome to your politics Monday. Tom McCarthy here in New York with live blog coverage.
4.55pm: Former Secret Service agent Dan Emmett has a new book out, "Within Arm's Length," about what it's like to be a president's first and last line of defense. The most harrowing moments of his career, Emmett tells ABC News' Jake Tapper, were when President Clinton would go jogging around Capitol Hill. • A Republican primary election in Illinois. One great thing about the 2012 primary season is that states that never expected their votes to matter suddenly are at the center of the action. What's at stake in the Land of Lincoln? This vote isn't likely to tip the race. But we're watching to see whether Rick Santorum can grab a state with a huge built-in base (Chicago and environs) for Romney.
President Clinton was the first president to run on a regular basis, and he was the first one to run in the open public areas... It was not uncommon, three days, four days of the week to come out of the White House during morning rush hour and take President Clinton for a run up Pennsylvania Avenue, or over at the Reflecting Pool or perhaps over at the Mall. ... • While you were out: Mitt Romney waxed Rick Santorum in the Puerto Rico primary over the weekend, taking all 20 delegates and close to 90 percent of the vote. "Those people who don't think that Latinos will vote for a Republican need to take a look at Puerto Rico," Romney said. Which is a little like saying that New Yorkers love traffic – you can tell by how many of them sit in it.
We were definitely an attack waiting to happen. • Mitt Romney plans to drop by the University of Chicago today for what's being billed as a major-ish speech on the economy. Rick Santorum is hosting no fewer than four (4) rallies across Illinois.
4.27pm: Who doesn't like to call things horsey-assey? It's funny every time. The New Yorker's Ryan Lizza has assembled a Children's Treasury of quotes about Rick Santorum, culled from news items about the candidate going back to the 1990s. It's a hoot. • The Obama campaign announces that it raised $45m in February, bringing the president's re-election war chest total to about $300m.
7. "Rick was a funny guy. He sported a bushy moustache for a time, wore Hawaiian shirts and smoked cigars. He liked to laugh, drink and call things 'horsey-assey.' He was very popular and fun to be around. I think the change happened when he met Karen."
/>—One of Santorum's cousins about his marriage to Karen Garver. Philadelphia City Paper, September 29, 2005 		10.26am: And if you've been following our coverage of the primary race in Illinois – Romney's going to win. That, at least, is the conclusion of the major pollsters and forecasters, who are predicting a "blowout" victory for the former Massachusetts governor.* Sixty-nine delegates are at stake in Illinois. The latest delegate count in the race to 1,144 has Romney with 503, Santorum with 252, Gingrich with 129 and Paul with 49. The Guardian delegate tracker is here.
/>*N.B.: The polls are sometimes wrong.**
/>**N.B.: Not that wrong.
4.16pm: How one among the GOP faithful sees this race: Republican communications strategist Liz Mair argues that sometimes malleability isn't such a bad thing: 10.53am: Whoever the Republican nominee may be, he will need a firecracker running mate to take on the sitting president, someone who can energize voters and help bring the competition in swing states and across a diverse electorate.

/>But the more I think about it, the more I think it comes down to this: Mitt Romney, for whatever his flaws, I feel often looks for ways to adapt to new circumstances (seriously—the guy is pretty adaptable!), and identify new opportunities where adversity and challenges are primarily apparent.... Is it better than what we get with Santorum? Yes. When we're considering the presidency and the potential for someone occupying the most powerful role in global affairs at the helm of an economy still facing some major, long term, structural (I fear) challenges, I think it is. 		In other news, Marco Rubio, the 41-year-old first-term senator from Florida of Cuban extraction with sterling conservative credentials and matinee star looks, has bumped up the publication of his autobiography from October to June. Politico's Mike Allen broke the news this morning. Full-size book jacket image here.
Here's the thing about Santorum: There's little in what he says that reads to me as anything but trying to fix today's problems by going back to yesterday. It should be noted that Rubio has explicitly dismissed speculation that he would sign on to the 2012 Republican ticket as the candidate for vice president. Some tie his reluctance to the risk that a 2012 run could make him into something that he definitely isn't so far: A loser.
4.03pm: "If you want a conservative as a nominee of this party, you must vote for Mitt Romney." – Rick Santorum, 2008.
/>The Romney campaign unearths more footage from the last time their candidate ran. 		11.04am: After Mitt Romney lost in Colorado and Minnesota, his campaign was blamed for not energetically contesting those primaries.
/>It appears that they are not about to commit a similar error in Illinois.
In 2008, Romney was the conservative solution to a John McCain candidacy. Romney's Super PAC reports another 200K ad buy in IL and is crushing Santorum's Super PAC -- spending almost 9 times as much in Illinois.
(h/t: NYT) — Jonathan Karl (@jonkarl) March 19, 2012
2.52pm: Here's video of Romney at the Chicago event questioning how young people could ever vote for a Democrat: 11.17am: Matt Drudge pulls a funny.
Here's the transcript: The conservative newshound and Romney booster has drudged up Rick Santorum's endorsement of Mitt Romney the last time Romney ran for president.
I don't see how a young American can vote for a Democrat. I apologize for being so offensive in saying that, but I catch your attention. It's no secret that Santorum endorsed Romney in 2008. It's something to see him standing in front of that Romney sign though (and the glasses!). Here is the news item the Drudge front page links to.
But in the humor, I mean there's some truth there.
And I say that for this reason: that party is focused on providing more and more benefits to my generation and amounting trillion dollar annual deficits [that] my generation will never pay for. The interest on that debt is going to young people in America. 11.24am: Santorum to Romney: I'll see your endorsement and raise you a cash contribution.
In the last presidential election John McCain won one age group: voters 65 and older. A full two-thirds of voters age 29 and under voted Democratic. So why do the youth like the Democrats? Is it because the Republicans are a party of identical old white guys who just seem to want to tell you how to live your life? That's not how Mitt Romney sees it. The issues that moves younger voters, he argues, should be debt. So it turns out the two Republican titans currently battling it out for the presidential nomination haven't always occupied opposite poles of the party. Santorum endorsed Romney for president in 2008. Now the reminder that Romney gave Santorum money for his doomed 2006 Senate reelection campaign.
It may be that a sizeable minority of young voters agree with Romney. The idea that an increasing size of your paycheck (if you can ever get a job) will be swiped to pay the interest on money the government borrowed back in naughties (the 2000s) to subsidize hip surgeries is... lame. Romney's PAC donated to Santorum in 2006.
The question is which party you can count on not to run up the debt. Romney's argument is that Democratic presidents are more expensive because they extend entitlements. In fact since the Watergate era, government spending has grown more under Republican presidents than under Democratic ones. A graph from the economist Mark Thoma has been making the rounds. It measures per capita growth in government spending for the last seven presidents' first term in office: — Andrew Kaczynski (@BuzzFeedAndrew) March 19, 2012
(h/t @GOP2012, @sullydish) It's almost as if America's political leaders are capable of striking alliances of convenience that supercede policy disagreements or even personal animosity. At this rate whichever one loses the nomination process is going to end up endorsing the other one for president.
2.15pm: And the curtain falls on Mitt Romney's address on the economy at the University of Chicago. 11.31am: Mitt Romney's messaging on the economy took a slightly different tack this morning, as the candidate told diners in Springfield, Illinois, that the economy is recovering and will continue to do so.
Exit music for Romney speech: "(I've Got a Gal in) Kalamazoo." Politico's Reid Epstein reported:
— Molly Ball (@mollyesque) March 19, 2012 "I believe the economy is coming back, by the way," Romney said. "We'll see what happens. It's had ups and downs. I think it's finally coming back. The economy always comes back after a recession, of course. There's never been one that we didn't recover from. The problem is this one has been deeper than it needed to be and a slower recovery than it should have been, by virtue of the policies of this president. Almost everything he's done has made it harder for this economy to recover."
Nice tune, that. And it worked in Michigan. The fine line Romney is walking here is how to talk about the economy in a way that reflects what voters are seeing – without crediting the president with good economic news.
Romney used the speech to attack the Obama administration for what he said was oppressive regulation, to roll out a list of federal fundees he would cut off and to tell young voters that unless they want to go broke paying for grandma's medicine they should vote Republican. "Freedom is on the ballot this year," he said. New Gallup numbers out today show that unemployment ticked down in the first half of March. "The percentage of Americans working part time but wanting full-time work also declined in mid-March, to 9.8% from 10.0% in February," Gallup reports.
2.06pm: Time for Mitt Romney's economy talk at the University of Chicago. We have some dispatches from the Twittersphere:2.06pm: Time for Mitt Romney's economy talk at the University of Chicago. We have some dispatches from the Twittersphere:
Romney tries to turn page and elevate candidacy with economic speech at U of Chicago. Professor introducing him begins with delegate lead.Romney tries to turn page and elevate candidacy with economic speech at U of Chicago. Professor introducing him begins with delegate lead.
— Jeff Zeleny (@jeffzeleny) March 19, 2012— Jeff Zeleny (@jeffzeleny) March 19, 2012
Romney says government regulation is hurting the economy – and it's gotten worse under President Obama:Romney says government regulation is hurting the economy – and it's gotten worse under President Obama:
Romney: Under Obama, "the government would have banned Thomas Edison's light bulb. Oh yeah -- they just did."Romney: Under Obama, "the government would have banned Thomas Edison's light bulb. Oh yeah -- they just did."
— Molly Ball (@mollyesque) March 19, 2012— Molly Ball (@mollyesque) March 19, 2012
Which might have been quite a zinger – except for this:Which might have been quite a zinger – except for this:
Romney appears to have forgotten that it was President Bush who pushed to phase out Edison's incandescent bulb.Romney appears to have forgotten that it was President Bush who pushed to phase out Edison's incandescent bulb.
— Neil King, WSJ (@NKingofDC) March 19, 2012— Neil King, WSJ (@NKingofDC) March 19, 2012
Romney is listing federal funding he would cut:Romney is listing federal funding he would cut:
Amtrak, PBS, Planned Parenthood, National Endowment for the Arts are all listed among those on the Romney chopping blockAmtrak, PBS, Planned Parenthood, National Endowment for the Arts are all listed among those on the Romney chopping block
— Sam Stein (@samsteinhp) March 19, 2012— Sam Stein (@samsteinhp) March 19, 2012
The candidate makes an unusual pitch to young voters. It's not an appeal to shared ideals. Instead he talks about entitlements, arguing that Democrats would be less willing to cut them, costing young voters more in debt service over their lifetimes. Which for young voters really into CBO reports should work great.The candidate makes an unusual pitch to young voters. It's not an appeal to shared ideals. Instead he talks about entitlements, arguing that Democrats would be less willing to cut them, costing young voters more in debt service over their lifetimes. Which for young voters really into CBO reports should work great.
romney says young voters "ought to be out there working like crazy for me and others like me, conservatives" who will work to reduce debtromney says young voters "ought to be out there working like crazy for me and others like me, conservatives" who will work to reduce debt
— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) March 19, 2012— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) March 19, 2012
11.31am: Mitt Romney's messaging on the economy took a slightly different tack this morning, as the candidate told diners in Springfield, Illinois, that the economy is recovering and will continue to do so. 2.15pm: And the curtain falls on Mitt Romney's address on the economy at the University of Chicago.
Politico's Reid Epstein reported: Exit music for Romney speech: "(I've Got a Gal in) Kalamazoo."
"I believe the economy is coming back, by the way," Romney said. "We'll see what happens. It's had ups and downs. I think it's finally coming back. The economy always comes back after a recession, of course. There's never been one that we didn't recover from. The problem is this one has been deeper than it needed to be and a slower recovery than it should have been, by virtue of the policies of this president. Almost everything he's done has made it harder for this economy to recover." — Molly Ball (@mollyesque) March 19, 2012
The fine line Romney is walking here is how to talk about the economy in a way that reflects what voters are seeing – without crediting the president with good economic news. Nice tune, that. And it worked in Michigan.
New Gallup numbers out today show that unemployment ticked down in the first half of March. "The percentage of Americans working part time but wanting full-time work also declined in mid-March, to 9.8% from 10.0% in February," Gallup reports. Romney used the speech to attack the Obama administration for what he said was oppressive regulation, to roll out a list of federal fundees he would cut off and to tell young voters that unless they want to go broke paying for grandma's medicine they should vote Republican. "Freedom is on the ballot this year," he said.
11.24am: Santorum to Romney: I'll see your endorsement and raise you a cash contribution. 2.52pm: Here's video of Romney at the Chicago event questioning how young people could ever vote for a Democrat:
So it turns out the two Republican titans currently battling it out for the presidential nomination haven't always occupied opposite poles of the party. Santorum endorsed Romney for president in 2008. Now the reminder that Romney gave Santorum money for his doomed 2006 Senate reelection campaign. Here's the transcript:
Romney's PAC donated to Santorum in 2006. I don't see how a young American can vote for a Democrat. I apologize for being so offensive in saying that, but I catch your attention.
— Andrew Kaczynski (@BuzzFeedAndrew) March 19, 2012 But in the humor, I mean there's some truth there.
It's almost as if America's political leaders are capable of striking alliances of convenience that supercede policy disagreements or even personal animosity. At this rate whichever one loses the nomination process is going to end up endorsing the other one for president. And I say that for this reason: that party is focused on providing more and more benefits to my generation and amounting trillion dollar annual deficits [that] my generation will never pay for. The interest on that debt is going to young people in America.
11.17am: Matt Drudge pulls a funny. In the last presidential election John McCain won one age group: voters 65 and older. A full two-thirds of voters age 29 and under voted Democratic. So why do the youth like the Democrats? Is it because the Republicans are a party of identical old white guys who just seem to want to tell you how to live your life? That's not how Mitt Romney sees it. The issues that moves younger voters, he argues, should be debt.
The conservative newshound and Romney booster has drudged up Rick Santorum's endorsement of Mitt Romney the last time Romney ran for president. It may be that a sizeable minority of young voters agree with Romney. The idea that an increasing size of your paycheck (if you can ever get a job) will be swiped to pay the interest on money the government borrowed back in naughties (the 2000s) to subsidize hip surgeries is... lame.
It's no secret that Santorum endorsed Romney in 2008. It's something to see him standing in front of that Romney sign though (and the glasses!). Here is the news item the Drudge front page links to. The question is which party you can count on not to run up the debt. Romney's argument is that Democratic presidents are more expensive because they extend entitlements. In fact since the Watergate era, government spending has grown more under Republican presidents than under Democratic ones. A graph from the economist Mark Thoma has been making the rounds. It measures per capita growth in government spending for the last seven presidents' first term in office:
(h/t @GOP2012, @sullydish)
11.04am: After Mitt Romney lost in Colorado and Minnesota, his campaign was blamed for not energetically contesting those primaries.
/>It appears that they are not about to commit a similar error in Illinois. 		4.03pm: "If you want a conservative as a nominee of this party, you must vote for Mitt Romney." – Rick Santorum, 2008.
/>The Romney campaign unearths more footage from the last time their candidate ran.
Romney's Super PAC reports another 200K ad buy in IL and is crushing Santorum's Super PAC -- spending almost 9 times as much in Illinois. In 2008, Romney was the conservative solution to a John McCain candidacy.
— Jonathan Karl (@jonkarl) March 19, 2012 (h/t: NYT)
10.53am: Whoever the Republican nominee may be, he will need a firecracker running mate to take on the sitting president, someone who can energize voters and help bring the competition in swing states and across a diverse electorate. 4.16pm: How one among the GOP faithful sees this race: Republican communications strategist Liz Mair argues that sometimes malleability isn't such a bad thing:
In other news, Marco Rubio, the 41-year-old first-term senator from Florida of Cuban extraction with sterling conservative credentials and matinee star looks, has bumped up the publication of his autobiography from October to June. Politico's Mike Allen broke the news this morning. Full-size book jacket image here.
/>But the more I think about it, the more I think it comes down to this: Mitt Romney, for whatever his flaws, I feel often looks for ways to adapt to new circumstances (seriously—the guy is pretty adaptable!), and identify new opportunities where adversity and challenges are primarily apparent.... Is it better than what we get with Santorum? Yes. When we're considering the presidency and the potential for someone occupying the most powerful role in global affairs at the helm of an economy still facing some major, long term, structural (I fear) challenges, I think it is.
It should be noted that Rubio has explicitly dismissed speculation that he would sign on to the 2012 Republican ticket as the candidate for vice president. Some tie his reluctance to the risk that a 2012 run could make him into something that he definitely isn't so far: A loser. Here's the thing about Santorum: There's little in what he says that reads to me as anything but trying to fix today's problems by going back to yesterday.
10.26am: And if you've been following our coverage of the primary race in Illinois – Romney's going to win. That, at least, is the conclusion of the major pollsters and forecasters, who are predicting a "blowout" victory for the former Massachusetts governor.* Sixty-nine delegates are at stake in Illinois. The latest delegate count in the race to 1,144 has Romney with 503, Santorum with 252, Gingrich with 129 and Paul with 49. The Guardian delegate tracker is here.
/>*N.B.: The polls are sometimes wrong.**
/>**N.B.: Not that wrong. 		4.27pm: Who doesn't like to call things horsey-assey? It's funny every time. The New Yorker's Ryan Lizza has assembled a Children's Treasury of quotes about Rick Santorum, culled from news items about the candidate going back to the 1990s. It's a hoot.
10.00am: Illinois votes tomorrow, the Obama campaign raises cash, Romney to speak on economy, Santorum is in rally mode – welcome to your politics Monday. Tom McCarthy here in New York with live blog coverage. 7. "Rick was a funny guy. He sported a bushy moustache for a time, wore Hawaiian shirts and smoked cigars. He liked to laugh, drink and call things 'horsey-assey.' He was very popular and fun to be around. I think the change happened when he met Karen."
/>—One of Santorum's cousins about his marriage to Karen Garver. Philadelphia City Paper, September 29, 2005
• A Republican primary election in Illinois. One great thing about the 2012 primary season is that states that never expected their votes to matter suddenly are at the center of the action. What's at stake in the Land of Lincoln? This vote isn't likely to tip the race. But we're watching to see whether Rick Santorum can grab a state with a huge built-in base (Chicago and environs) for Romney. 4.55pm: Former Secret Service agent Dan Emmett has a new book out, "Within Arm's Length," about what it's like to be a president's first and last line of defense. The most harrowing moments of his career, Emmett tells ABC News' Jake Tapper, were when President Clinton would go jogging around Capitol Hill.
• While you were out: Mitt Romney waxed Rick Santorum in the Puerto Rico primary over the weekend, taking all 20 delegates and close to 90 percent of the vote. "Those people who don't think that Latinos will vote for a Republican need to take a look at Puerto Rico," Romney said. Which is a little like saying that New Yorkers love traffic – you can tell by how many of them sit in it. President Clinton was the first president to run on a regular basis, and he was the first one to run in the open public areas... It was not uncommon, three days, four days of the week to come out of the White House during morning rush hour and take President Clinton for a run up Pennsylvania Avenue, or over at the Reflecting Pool or perhaps over at the Mall. ...
• Mitt Romney plans to drop by the University of Chicago today for what's being billed as a major-ish speech on the economy. Rick Santorum is hosting no fewer than four (4) rallies across Illinois. We were definitely an attack waiting to happen.
• The Obama campaign announces that it raised $45m in February, bringing the president's re-election war chest total to about $300m. 5.38pm: A quick word about what's at stake in tomorrow's voting in Illinois, in which the latest polling has Mitt Romney sailing to victory on strong support in the Chicago area.
Whatever happens in Illinois, Rick Santorum faces something of a voting desert before the campaign returns to a state he's pretty sure he can win – his home state of Pennsylvania. The exception is Wisconsin on Tuesday, April 3; polling last month put Santorum ahead there, but that was before the Romney campaign turned its attention – and money – to the race.
As for that voting desert: April holds five races in states on the East Coast, plus the District of Columbia. That's Romney territory, and the front runner can be counted on to brag about the delegates he racks up in places like New York (95 delegates at stake) on April 24. By the end of April, Mitt Romney could look strong.
How the dynamic shapes up depends on what happens tomorrow night in Illinois. A surprise Santorum win could mean a longer stay for the Repulican party in its primary purgatory.
5.59pm: That's our live blog politics coverage for the day. Here's where things sit:
• Illinois (69 delegates, awarded somewhat proportionally) votes tomorrow, and the latest polls have Mitt Romney solidly out front. These polls are thought to be much more reliable than the ones that had Romney winning Colorodo and Mississippi earlier this cycle. The candidate must certainly hope so.
• With a handful of old clips from the 2008 campaign, the Romney campaign is painting Rick Santorum as a shameless two-faced supporter of... Mitt Romney.
• Rick Santorum barnstormed across Illinois today, looking for a boost before what could be a very difficult April. By the time he appears on Fox News' "On the Record" tonight at 10pm ET, Santorum will have hosted four rallies in four different cities in Illinois. Win or lose there, he has earned an "A" for effort. We'll be listening for mentions of "horsey assey."
6.17pm: And one more thing: My colleague Gary Younge is at a Romney campaign event in Peoria, Illinois, right now. He sends along a photo of one hot-selling button there in the Heartland.