Rick Santorum: 'Running A Business Is Not The Same As Being President Of The United States'

Santorum Slams Romney's Business Experience

WASHINGTON -- In order to lock down the Republican nomination before the GOP convention, a candidate must amass 1,144 delegates. On Sunday, Rick Santorum was asked by CNN's Candy Crowley if he would step aside should he fall short of that figure or if he'd stay in and press for a brokered convention so as to block Romney.

Refusing to say that he would step aside, Santorum noted that in Crowley's hypothetical, Romney, too, would have failed to collect the required delegates to sew up the nomination.

"Our calculation of the delegate count is very different than what's out there," he said. "We're in this to win."

Santorum said that if Romney couldn't nail down the nomination with the outsized money advantage he has, this would be evidence of a weakness that President Barack Obama would exploit in the general election. "He's not going to have those overwhelming advantages in the general election," Santorum said.

The former Pennsylvania senator rejected Romney's assertion that he was better prepared to be president because he had been a business leader. "Running a business is not the same as being president of the United States," Santorum said.

Santorum struck a similar tone on ABC's "This Week."

"We can’t nominate such a weak candidate," he said. “I’d love to be able to get one-on-one with Gov. Romney and expose the record that would be the weakest record we could possibly put up against Barack Obama."

Said Santorum of his rival Mitt Romney, a former Massachusetts governor: "He's hiding behind the billionaires who are running his super PAC and spending an outrageous amount of money."

“The more I look at the record of Gov. Romney and match it up against Barack Obama, I feel like I am doing a training run for the general election,” Santorum said. “The same issues I'm out there campaigning on against Governor Romney are the same issues I’m going to campaign against Barack Obama on."

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