A new ad, “Rombo,” released Wednesday by Rick Santorum’s campaign, features a Mitt Romney look-alike with a paint gun shooting mud at (and missing) cardboard cutouts of Santorum.
“Mitt Romney’s negative attack machine is back — on full throttle. This time Romney’s firing his mud at Rick Santorum. Romney and his super-PAC have spent a staggering $20 million — mostly attacking federal Republicans,” the ad states. “Why? Because Romney’s trying to hide from his big government Romneycare and his support for job-killing cap-and-trade. And in the end, Mitt Romney’s ugly attacks are going to backfire.”
The new ad comes as the Romney and Santorum camps ramp up attacks on each other. Romney has had to turn his attention toward the former Pennsylvania senator after Santorum
’s trio of victories in recent Republican primary contests sparked an upswing in the polls. Recent polling has found Santorum running neck-and-neck with Romney in a number of upcoming primary states as well as nationally.
Thus far, Romney has worked to paint Santorum as a pro-earmark “big government” spender. Santorum, in response, has hammered Romney on the former Massachusetts governor’s healthcare reform law.
Romney laughed off the ad Wednesday on Fox News, calling it “pretty good.”
“That’s the nature of politics, which is you always accuse the other guy of what you’ve done yourself,” he said. “My campaign hasn’t run any negative ads against Rick Santorum ... I’m not saying we won’t finally go after the guy, but frankly, he’s been going after me.”
He jokingly added that the Romney body-double in the advertisement “looked pretty good.”
— Alicia Cohn contributed.
