Romney Trances Santorum in PR } Santorum Doesn’t Know What PR is
NBC News declared Romney the projected winner on Sunday evening. By virtue of the margin of his victory, Romney appeared on track to capture most — if not all — of the U.S. territory's 20 delegates by virtue of winning over 50 percent of the popular vote. (Any candidate who wins at least half of the popular vote wins all of Puerto Rico's delegates.)
The Puerto Rico primary, alongside caucuses held this weekend in Missouri, marked another step in the extended primary campaign, which has principally narrowed to a battle between Romney and former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum. Reflecting the ferocity of their battle to amass the 1,144 delegates needed to secure the nomination, both Romney and Santorum traveled to Puerto Rico during the latter half of last week.
Romney said on Saturday during his visit that he was "cautiously optimistic" he would win the primary in Puerto Rico, where he enjoys the support of Gov. Luis Fortuño and his political organization.
"I care about you. I care about the people of Puerto Rico," Romney said. "Politics in puerto rico is spoken with energy and passion."
Both candidates spoke to a major issue in the territory — the prospect of making it the 51st state in the U.S. — during their visit. Romney has said he would support statehood if a majority of Puerto Rico voters support it. Santorum landed in a small political firestorm, though, by suggesting that Puerto Ricans adopt English as their lone official language as a condition for statehood.
Santorum backtracked, and blamed the media, whom he accused of taking his comments out of context.
“For someone to misrepresent and completely fabricate something that I never said or even intimated is very disappointing,” he said. “Hopefully that can set the record straight here and let people know that rick Santorum has been and will continue to be a friend of Puerto Rico."
Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum reiterated on Sunday that Puerto Ricans would need to work on their English before the U.S. territory could become a state.
“What I’ve said is that obviously Puerto Rico is a Spanish-speaking country, a Spanish-speaking island, not a country, but Spanish-speaking island, they will continue to speak Spanish and that’s their culture and they have every right to do so,” he said on ABC News’ This Week. “But what I’ve said is that there should be fluency in English as well as Spanish and that, if they want to, and I think that it’s just makes sense, just like here in this country.”
“I mean, Governor Romney and I have both said that we would like English as the official language of this country yet when Governor Romney went to Puerto Rico he said, ‘Oh, no you don’t have to speak English as a requirement to be a state,’ yet he wants English to be the official language of this country.”
pic credit rawstory
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