Former presidential candidate Rick Santorum went out of his way to bury the hatchet with the man who beat him for the Republican nomination, as he stumped for Mitt Romney in Pennsylvania on Saturday.
Putting the bitter primary season behind him, Santorum urged the crowd in the Westmoreland County seat of Greensburg to rally Republican grassroots in support of Romney, the
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported.
He described the November election as a “tipping point for freedom,” as he laid into President Barack Obama’s policies.
Santorum called Obama “drunk with power” as he assailed his immigration-enforcement policies and slammed what he called the administration’s attempts to “bully the Supreme Court” on healthcare.
"We must rally behind and do everything we possibly can to support Gov. Mitt Romney so he's the next president of the United States,” Santorum said, according to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
“Pennsylvania is where it’s at... If Pennsylvania goes Republican, Mitt Romney will be the next president of the United States.”
It was all a far cry from the GOP primaries and their immediate aftermath, when Santorum endorsed the presumptive candidate in an email rather than at a high-profile staged event.
The two men had a meeting in May, but since then there has been hardly a word from Santorum in support of the man who will carry his party’s banner into the election. Rather than appear with Romney, Santorum led his own tour through Iowa to thank supporters for the early caucus victory that helped him become Romney’s most serious competitor.
Just last month, Santorum appeared to damn his former rival with faint praise, telling CNN, “Well, I trust him more than I do Barack Obama.”
The New York Daily News described today’s appearance as “a sign that the frosty relations between the former Republican rivals may be thawing.
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