Thaindian News

Washington, Feb 21 (IANS) Two leading Republican presidential candidates Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich are training their guns on President Barack Obama as they woo conservative voters ahead of contests for party nomination.

Campaigning in the perennial swing state of Ohio, former senator Santorum said the president’s “radical environmentalist policies” are helping push gas prices to near record highs and are threatening to derail the economic recovery.

Obama’s “mismanagement” of US foreign policy in the Middle East as the cause of “tension” reflected in rising oil prices, Santorum, who has won four of the nine contests to date, said.

Former House speaker Gingrich, meanwhile, told a Tulsa, Oklahoma, event that Obama was “incapable of defending the United States” and therefore defeating him in the November election was a “duty of national security.”

“The president wants to unilaterally weaken the United States, he wants to cut the aid to Israel for its anti-ballistic missile defence, he refuses to take Iran seriously,” said Gingrich, who has won only one primary so far.

Santorum’s emphasis on hot-button social and economic issues comes amid a recent surge in Republican support for the former senator, who now leads former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney in a number of national primary polls.

Gallup’s daily tracking poll Monday showed Santorum leading Romney, who has also won four states, 36 percent to 26 percent among Republicans nationwide.

The new numbers represented a six-point drop for Romney since last week, when he was statistically tied with Santorum, who rose by five points in the same period.

Gingrich has seen his poll numbers decline over the past month since his only primary win in South Carolina on January 21.

According to Gallup, Gingrich came in third place in Monday’s poll with 13 percent, and House member Ron Paul of Texas was close behind at 11 percent.

(Arun Kumar can be contacted at arun.kumar@ians.in)