MHERST, N.H. — Even as he tried to catch up to Mitt Romneyin New Hampshire, Rick Santorum began the weekend looking past Tuesday’s primary to the 11-day battle in South Carolina that will follow.
Mr. Santorum, a former United States senator from Pennsylvania, picked up support from a key social conservative on Saturday as his campaign completed the purchase of time for television commercials that will run in South Carolina from Jan. 10 through Jan. 17, according to Republicans who have been tracking the television market. He planned to head south to Greenville, S.C., as soon as Sunday morning’s debate is over.“We feel great about South Carolina,” Mr. Santorum said.
The new commercials would be the Santorum campaign’s largest commitment yet in South Carolina, which will hold its primary on Jan. 21. Mr. Santorum was already getting support from his “super PAC,” the Red White and Blue Fund. It began running a 30-second commercial titled “Pride” on Saturday, which emphasizes what his advisers believe is his best appeal to South Carolina voters who remain wary of supporting Mitt Romney: his deeply conservative record.
“He’s the principled conservative,” the announcer says. Then, taking an implicit shot at Mr. Romney, who has been attacked for reversing some of the more liberal positions he advocated as the governor of Massachusetts, the announcer adds, “Rick Santorum, the conservative we can trust.”
Mr. Santorum was set to receive the backing of Gary Bauer, the chairman of the conservative group Campaign for Working Families, who said he planned to endorse Mr. Santorum officially when he arrives in South Carolina. Mr. Bauer, who declared in an interview earlier this week that he would not take part in a concerted effort “to try and stop Mitt Romney,” said he had concluded that Mr. Santorum’s middle-class background made him a stronger general election candidate against President Obama.
“It’s going to be a particularly bitter, nasty general election. That’s what the White House is signaling with the class warfare rhetoric,” Mr. Bauer said in an interview Saturday. “In an election like that, you want the base of your party to be on fire for the candidate.”
With just three days left before voting in the New Hampshire primary, Mr. Santorum made his closing argument the one that candidates have been leveling against Mr. Romney for months — that Mr. Romney is not conservative enough to be the party’s standard-bearer.
Standing on the bench of a picnic table here on a balmy afternoon outside a small delicatessen, Mr. Santorum said that Mr. Romney is the candidate of the “establishment” and would only perpetuate “the status quo.”
“The leader in this race fashions himself as, ‘I’m a C.E.O., I’m a good manager,’ ” Mr. Santorum said in a near shout as he spoke without a microphone. But, he said, the country did not need a manager, “it needs someone with a bold vision to transform Washington to limit government, not to manage the problems that are in that city.”
On a day that featured a flurry of campaign appearances and television interviews, Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul both echoed Mr. Santorum’s attack against Mr. Romney.
Mr. Gingrich released a flier called “Not Romney!” that hammers the message that “Romney is not a conservative” and “Romney is not electable.” Mr. Paul has said that Mr. Romney “won’t stand firm” for conservative principles.
But Mr. Santorum — who is seeking to build on his near win in Iowa — used his sharpest language yet as he pushed against an ever-closing deadline to close the gap with Mr. Romney in New Hampshire.
“Fees went up, taxes went up, spending went up” under Mr. Romney, Mr. Santorum said in Amherst. “We saw Romneycare be instituted, which was the template for Obamacare.” He then asked, incredulously, “That’s the reality of the candidate that we want to put up? As a contrast?”
Mr. Romney continued to largely ignore his rivals as they crisscrossed New Hampshire on Saturday, ahead of the evening’s debate. Campaigning at a rally in Derry, on Saturday morning, Mr. Romney hammered President Obama’s leadership in the White House.
“What frightens me today is we have a president I don’t think who understands the nature of America, the power of opportunity and freedom,” Mr. Romney said. “He said he was going to bring big things to America. Well, he did, but they came with great big price tags and they didn’t work out so well. Big things, bad things, expensive things.”
Polls show that Mr. Romney leads the field by a wide margin in New Hampshire. but Mr. Romney and his allies spent the day trying to lower expectations even as they sought to keep his supporters motivated.
“Let me tell you: don’t get too confident with those poll numbers. I’ve watched polls come and go,” Mr. Romney said at a breakfast rally Saturday. “Things change very quickly. It’s very fluid. I need to make sure you guys get your friends to go out and vote, and you vote as well.”
Nikki R. Haley, the governor of South Carolina, who traveled with Mr. Romney to New Hampshire, urged his supporters on Saturday morning to come out in force on Tuesday for their candidate.
“We don’t just need a win in New Hampshire; we need a landslide in New Hampshire,” Ms. Haley said, adding, “Mitt Romney’s going to win South Carolina, by the way.”
Five former ambassadors to the Vatican endorsed Mitt Romney on Saturday, choosing a Mormon over two Roman Catholic rivals in the race for the Republican presidential nomination.
In a statement showcased by Mr. Romney’s campaign, the ambassadors said they “are united in our wholehearted support for the candidacy of Mitt Romney for the presidency of the United States because of his commitment to and support of the values that we feel are critical in a national leader.”
Jon M. Huntsman Jr., a former governor of Utah, continued to campaign across New Hampshire, where he has spent weeks waiting for the rest of the field to arrive. At stops Friday and Saturday morning, he beseeched voters to be serious about their choice.
“The pundits come into New Hampshire, as they are now, and say ‘Here’s how it’s going to happen folks,’ ” Mr. Huntsman said at a town hall meeting in North Haverhill, where about 100 people turned out to hear him. “Then the people of New Hampshire step in and it’s a different reality. You always, always upend conventional wisdom, and I think you’re going to do it again.”
Mr. Paul had said he planned to support his party’s eventual nominee, even though most of the other Republican candidates, he believed, would hew close to the status quo.
“I will support the Republican nominee, because I think they will be better” than President Obama, he said. “But I think it will be marginally better.”
Even as the candidates raced across New Hampshire, they were also keeping an eye on South Carolina, where voters will go to the polls in two weeks.
Gov. Rick Perry of Texas, who is not competing in New Hampshire but will appear in the debates here, plans to go to South Carolina on Sunday for a last effort to save his candidacy.
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