Updated 10:58 a.m. - TULSA, Okla. -- Aiming to snag a key win in Oklahoma's Super Tuesday contest, Rick Santorum on Sunday barnstormed in the conservative state, painting his chief rival as a moneyed but uninspiring politico whose rarefied air allows him "five home states" and possible tax breaks.
"You know, I don’t have my home state up on [Super] Tuesday like Congressman Gingrich or Governor Romney -- though Gov. Romney has about five home states," he quipped to laughter during a rally at Grace Church outside Tulsa. "I don’t know how that works, but I don’t live that kind of life. I have one home state."
(Santorum does own a home in a Super Tuesday state -- Virginia -- but he did not qualify for the ballot there. He was criticized during his 2006 re-election run for living with his family close to Washington, D.C., rather than residing permanently in Pennsylvania, the state he represented.)
Andrea Saul, a spokeswoman for the Romney campaign, said in response: "Sen. Santorum's base is Obama supporters. The last thing the White House wants is to have to face Mitt Romney in a general election, so Sen. Santorum is relying on them to throw the primary in his direction. Mitt Romney has won five contests in a row and won in every corner of the United States with Republican voters. It's going to take a businessman who is not a creature of Washington to change the status quo."
Indirect digs at Romney's "kind of life" -- and his cash-laden donors --were sprinkled throughout Santorum's two-stop visit to Oklahoma.
"Guess what, rich people can move their money other places," he said in Tulsa, using presumptive frontrunner Gov. Mitt Romney as an example to illustrate a point of tax policy. "As we saw from someone who went out as I did and worked. My tax rate was about 27, 28 percent. Gov. Romney's was half that amount."
Santorum paid double Romney's tax rate in 2010, records show
"Gov. Romney has never won a state in this country where he was outspent," he told a crowd in Oklahoma City after referencing big dollar contributors to a major pro-Romney super PAC. "Think about that. Think about the fact that every state he has won he has outspent his opponent at least 4 to 1 or 5 to 1, and he's barely won."
"What does that tell you about his ability to motivate and rally the people of America for the big change we need coming into the general election?" he asked.
The former Pennsylvania senator, who himself reaped a significant income from his tenure as a consultant after he left Capitol Hill, hopes that a common-man approach will boost him over Romney in key Southern states like Oklahoma and Tennessee.
"You go out and give us a win," he said Sunday. "And we will go on past Super Tuesday, we will go to Alabama and Mississippi and win there and this race will turn around and we will go on and be the nominee.
