Santorum to Romney: 'Don't complain if I hit back'

Rick Santorum and Mitt Romney, battling neck and neck in the polls on Election Day in Michigan and Arizona, blasted each other over the Santorum campaign's attempt to reach out to Michigan Democrats.

In the new robocalls launched this week in Michigan, a speaker urges Democrats to come out and vote for Santorum over Romney. Mitt Romney on Tuesday blasted the calls as a "dirty trick." 

“If you want to hit me, hit me. But don’t go out and complain if I hit back,” Santorum responded on conservative Laura Ingraham's radio show. “In New Hampshire when 53 percent of people who voted in the primary weren’t Republicans and [Romney] encouraged them to vote, that’s OK? But the voters that are going to be necessary for us to win, that he says he can attract, [it’s not OK to appeal to them]?”

Romney and Newt Gingrich accused Santorum of appealing to the unions with the calls. “Romney supported the bailouts for his Wall Street billionaire buddies, but opposes the auto bailouts. That was a slap in the face to every Michigan worker, and we're not going to let Romney get away with it,” says the speaker on the call.

Santorum dismissed the criticism by saying he cannot be considered a “Big Labor Republican” when the labor unions are spending money opposing him.

Polls in both states show an unpredictable race between Romney and Santorum, who have battled it out particularly over Michigan, where Romney is campaigning on his home-state credentials.

Santorum said he’s “hanging tough” in Michigan “despite [Romney’s] huge home-court advantage.”

He insisted Romney has only won states where he already held an advantage, such as Maine and New Hampshire, and has yet to win the states he actually needs to secure the GOP nomination.

“Gov. Romney has no message other than ‘Rick Santorum isn’t conservative,’ yet you watch MSNBC and you hear ‘Rick Santorum is too conservative,’ ” Santorum said.

It’s not the only criticism Santorum has faced in the past few days. He blamed the media for “combing through everything you’ve said in your life,” which brought up a speech more than a year old in which Santorum criticized former President John F. Kennedy for his 1960 speech on the separation of church and state.

“There were some very good, important things that he said in that [speech],” Santorum told Ingraham. “But I think there were some things that triggered the privatization of faith.”

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