WASHINGTON - Republican presidential candidates Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum, battling furiously for the most conservative perch before the critical Michigan primary vote on Tuesday, also are looking just over the horizon a bonanza of delegates in the 10-state nominating contests that fall on one day just a week later.
Romney and Santorum are virtually tied heading into the critical Michigan vote where the outcome could further boost Romney's tenuous front-runner position or upend the race for the party's nomination to challenge President Barack Obama in November. Michiganders vote on the same day as Arizona Republicans. Polls show Romney with a clear lead in the conservative far-Western state.
The Michigan showdown will be a warmup to the one looming March 6 in neighbouring Ohio, one of the 10 states that hold nominating contests on what is know as Super Tuesday.
Romney currently leads in the race to amass the most delegates with 123. Santorum has 72, while former Speaker of the House of Representatives Newt Gingrich and Texas Rep. Ron Paul have 32 and 19, respectively. The totals include endorsements from Republican National Committee members who will automatically attend the party's national convention and can support any candidate they choose.
A candidate needs 1,144 delegates to secure the nomination.
Both Arizona and Michigan each lost half their delegates for defying the national Republican party by holding their votes before March 6.
The winner in Arizona, where Romney is favoured, will take all 29 of the state's delegates. But Michigan will divide its 30 delegates by giving 2 to the winner of each of the 14 congressional districts in the state. The final 2 delegates are awarded in proportion to the statewide vote, probably to the top two candidates, if both get more than 25 per cent of the vote.
Before Super Tuesday, Washington state holds caucuses on Saturday. Forty delegates are at stake. In the March 6 Super Tuesday vote 419 delegates are up for grabs.
The vote in Michigan on Tuesday will test former Pennsylvania senator Santorum's far-right message on social issues and determine how badly Romney has damaged his chances in his native state by continuing to insist that Obama was wrong to bailout the U.S. auto industry, the heart of the state's ailing industrial base.
The auto giants General Motors and Chrysler Corp. have come roaring back from near-collapse after a huge infusion of federal money, managed bankruptcy and wrenching reorganization. Romney's opposition to that Obama program has hurt him in Michigan, where even the Republican governor and GM chief, also a Republican, flatly disagree with Romney. Polls show Obama with a double-digit lead over both Romney and Santorum in the Midwestern state.
Romney continued railing against the auto bailout in an appearance on Fox News on Sunday, accusing Obama of having opened the federal checkbook as a means of paying off the United Auto Workers (UAW) union for its support in his 2008 election victory.
Obama insists that the auto bailout saved at least a million U.S. jobs at a time when the economy was crashing and in danger of moving into a depression.
Romney, however, kept up his criticism, saying Obama "was paying off the people that supported him and that, by the way, are trying to get him re-elected."
Santorum also opposed the cash infusion for the car companies but has manage to duck the issue. Romney, given that his father was Michigan governor and ran a now-defunct carmaker there, has been more vocal in the past in opposing the Obama administration bailout and has been challenged on that repeatedly this year.
In Tennessee on Sunday, Santorum, a former Pennsylvania senator, rebuked Romney for backing the Wall Street bailout. He acknowledged that he and Romney opposed the auto industry bailout, and said Romney was inconsistent. The Wall Street bailout is much-despised by the tea party wing of the Republican party. It was initiated in the final weeks of the George W. Bush presidency as the U.S. financial system was nearing collapse at the end of 2008.
In Arizona, Romney, a former Massachusetts governor, picked up the endorsement of the state's deeply conservative Gov. Jan Brewer on Sunday. Romney's tough stance on illegal immigration is closely aligned with Republican sentiment in the state that borders Mexico and has moved aggressively against immigrants who are in the country illegally. Portions of a new state law were challenged by the Obama Justice Department and will be decided this spring by the U.S. Supreme Court.
As the Republicans battle for the nomination, all of them, including Gingrich and Paul, now trail Obama in national polls. The president has seen his approval ratings improve in tandem with signs that the struggling U.S. economy is finally on the way toward a robust, albeit still shaky, recovery from the Great Recession of 2007-2009.
