Santorum: Romneycare "disqualifies" Romney

As quoted by Katrina Trinko at The Corner.

But, in his appearance on Fox News Sunday this morning, he also disputed that it was the “social conservative” vote that was splintering, saying “a lot of conservatives have concerns about Gov. Romney’s record on the economy, and obviously, Romneycare is a real scarlet letter here.”

“We can’t have a nominee,” Santorum continued, “that takes away the most important issue in this election, which is an explosion of the federal government and robbing of people’s freedom on the federal level with Obamacare, and Romneycare, which was the predecessor to Obamacare, just disqualifies him in his ability to go out and aggressively go after this top-down approach to health care.”

While I don't agree that it "disqualifies" him, I've made clear on several occasions that I believed it would prevent Romney from winning the Republican nomination. What that position assumed, of course, was that someone else would show up who could win it.

That's clearly not happened. That's clearly not going to happen. So, since I haven't commented recently on this, let's get this out there now.

The race for the Republican nomination for the Presidency is over. Mitt Romney is going to be the candidate. Huntsman, who was never a viable candidate, is gone. Ron Paul is not a viable candidate. Newt Gingrich is not a viable candidate. Rick Santorum is not a viable candidate. And Rick Perry, who looked like a viable candidate when he entered the race, has been a dreadful candidate. Yes, they still have to have primaries, and count votes, and add up delegates. But it's all mechanical now. The race is over; Mitt's won.