WASHINGTON — Fresh off a decisive victory in Illinois, Mitt Romney won critical establishment support Wednesday from former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and got new help from former Sen. Bob Dole as Romney looked to unite the Republican Party behind his candidacy. He said he’s “almost there” after pursuing the GOP nomination for six years.
The son of one president and the brother of another, Bush had stayed out of the race for months. Some party elders publicly had urged him to become a candidate when it looked as if Romney was having trouble closing the deal. On Wednesday, a day after Romney won Illinois by 12 points, Bush signaled that was no longer the case.
“Now is the time for Republicans to unite behind Gov. Romney and take our message of fiscal conservatism and job creation to all voters this fall,” Bush said in a written statement. He congratulated the other Republican candidates “for a hard-fought, thoughtful debate and primary season.”
Dole, the former Senate majority leader and a Romney supporter, suggested that rival Rick Santorum is getting close to a decision point on whether to stay in or surrender his bid for the nomination. Dole, who became the GOP nominee in 1996 on his third try, said former House Speaker Newt Gingrich is “probably finished or almost finished.”
“Rick, I think, he’s got a real problem. In every race, Romney is going to pick up delegates,” Dole said in a telephone interview Wednesday. “It’s getting close to the point where he’s got to take a hard look at it.”
Bush’s support came as a surprise to the Romney campaign. Bush personally emailed the former Massachusetts governor Wednesday morning to say he planned to make the endorsement.
Santorum brushed off Bush’s endorsement, saying Romney is “getting all the establishment Republicans.” The former U.S. senator from Pennsylvania said in Harvey, La., on Wednesday morning that Romney isn’t “someone that conservatives can or should trust.”
“They should all start supporting me because I am the strong conservative candidate,” Santorum said.
Romney had e-mailed supporters Tuesday night that his Illinois win “means we are that much closer to securing the nomination, uniting our party, and taking on President Obama.” He urged the party to fall in line behind his bid, saying, “We are almost there.” Romney planned to spend much of today personally courting members of Congress and other officials in Washington.
Still, his campaign ran into some trouble Wednesday after a senior adviser compared Romney’s policy positions to an Etch A Sketch toy, suggesting they could easily change to appeal to moremoderate general-election voters.
“I think you hit a reset button for the fall campaign. Everything changes,” said the adviser, Eric Fehrnstrom, during an interview on CNN. “It’s almost like an Etch A Sketch. You can kind of shake it up, and we start all over again.”
Asked to clarify the remark, Fehrnstrom said only that the general election is “a different race, with different candidates, and the main issue now becomes” exclusively President Barack Obama.
Santorum and Gingrich seized on the comments. Santorum held up one of the red toys at a rally in Mandeville, La., and told supporters, “You are not looking at someone who is the Etch ASketch candidate.”
Santorum adviser Alice Stewart appeared outside a town-hall meeting Romney held in Arbutus, Md., handing out the toy. She told reporters that Fehrnstrom’s comment “confirms what a lot of conservatives have been afraid of.”
The aide’s remark, shesaid, was an acknowledgment that Romney’s “conservative credentials can come and go with the climate, just like an Etch a Sketch, and we can’t have that.”
Gingrich posted on Twitter: “Etch A Sketch is a great toy but a losing strategy.”
After initially ignoring reporters’ shouted questions about the flap as he left his Maryland event, Romney addressed the issue. He said he wouldn’t change his “policies and positions” in a race against Obama.
“Organizationally, a general-election campaign takes on a different profile,” Romney said. “The issues I’m running on will be exactly the same. I’m running as a conservative Republican. I was a conservative Republican governor. I’ll be running as a conservative Republicannominee.”
LOW TURNOUT
In defeating Santorum in Illinois, Romney notched his 20th win of a state or U.S. territory. Romney and his allies had spent hundreds of thousands of dollars more than Santorum and his backers in Illinois, and it showed in Tuesday’s results: Romney trounced Santorum, 47 percent to 35 percent.
But rivals suggested the win came without an electrified electorate: Turnout seemed likely to be among the lowest in decades, as officials in several election districts said it hovered around20 percent.
“You could draw a bigger crowd at a Green Bay Packers rally in downtown Chicago than what Mr. Romney delivered to the polls,” Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois said on CBS’ This Morning.
Romney was the clear favorite among Illinois Republicans who were most concerned about picking someone who is capable of taking on Obama in the fall. Romney’s wife, Ann, suggested this week that it was time for the party to coalesce behind him. And in an appeal to the centrist independents who will decide the general election, Romney pledged Tuesday to work with Democrats or “die trying.”
“Tonight was a primary, but November is a general election. And we’re going to face a defining decision as a people,” Romney said during a victory speech. “We knowwhat Barack Obama’s vision is. We’ve been living it these last three years. My vision is very, very different.”
Romney opened Wednesday by Tweeting a “Happy Anniversary” message to his wife complete with a wedding photo from 1969. His campaign also released a Web video in which Ann Romney recounts the details of their dating-to-marriage story.
Polls show Romney has the advantage heading toward Maryland’s April 3 primary. But the South, whereLouisiana votes Saturday, has proved less hospitable to Romney.
Santorum was pushing for a strong showing in Saturday’s primary, driven largely by the conservative religious voters who have propelled him to victory elsewhere.
“We think we’re going to do well here. This state, I think of all the states in the Deep South, I think matches up with us well. It’s a very conservative state,” Santorum said as he campaigned in Louisiana this week. “We’re going to do better even than Mississippi and Alabama.”
Romney has struggled to win the support of evangelical conservatives.
In Illinois, for example, Romney won 45 percent of “very conservative” voters who weren’t evangelical, beating Santorum’s 36 percent. But among very conservative evangelicals Romney lost badly, 56 percent for Santorum to 33 percent for Romney.
Romney picked up at least 41 delegates in Illinois, according to initial results.
Romney has 563 delegates in the overall count maintained by The Associated Press, out of 1,144 needed to win the nomination. Santorum has 263 delegates, Gingrich 135 and U.S. Rep. Ron Paul of Texas 50.
After the Louisiana primary, a 10-day break follows before Washington, D.C., Maryland and Wisconsin hold primaries April 3.
Santorum is not on the ballot in the nation’s capital. Private polling shows Romney with the edge in Maryland, and the pro-Romney super political action committee Restore Our Future is spending more than $450,000 on ads in the state.
Wisconsin shapes up as the next big test between Romney and Santorum. Already, Restore Our Future has put down more than $2 million in television advertising across Wisconsin. Santorum has spent about $50,000 to answer.
Information for this article was contributed by Kasie Hunt of The Associated Press; and by Julie Hirschfeld Davis, Roxana Tiron, John McCormick, Kristin Jensen and Lisa Lerer of Bloomberg News.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 03/22/2012