Rick Santorum: I don’t blame Iowa…they had to go through the process
CNN’s Wolf Blitzer spoke with former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum about his thoughts on the updated vote count from Iowa. A highlight from the interview is after the jump; please visit http://cnnpressroom.blogs.cnn.com for additional information. This full interview will air on The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer on CNN 4-6 p.m. ET.
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Please credit all usage of the interview to CNN’s The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer
Highlight from Interview
THIS IS A RUSH FDCH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED
WOLF BLITZER, HOST: Senator Santorum, thanks very much for coming in.
RICK SANTORUM (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: It’s great to be back with you, Wolf.
BLITZER: All right, first of all, congratulations. Apparently you won in Iowa.
SANTORUM: Yes.
BLITZER: You know, have they officially told you you won?
SANTORUM: Yes. I got an e-mail at 4:51 this morning saying that — the certified vote. We won by 34 votes. If they include these other very, very small precincts that have not been officially certified but were phoned in on election night, we actually won by more than 35 — 34 votes.
So either way you tally it, we were successful. And we feel very good about that. And we’ve, you know, we have a — a strong plan to continue that momentum and take it here to South Carolina now and off to Florida.
And as we saw from today, with the race narrowing, eventually, it’s going to get down to a conservative versus a moderate. And we — you know, we’ve now won one of the two primaries. We hope to do well here in South Carolina. We’re running, right now, according to the polls, in second in Florida.
So, again, you know, we’ve beaten Newt Gingrich twice in two races. So we feel like we’re — we’re in pretty good shape coming out of South Carolina to go to Florida and beyond.
BLITZER: You must feel bad, though, that they took two weeks to — to make this official. If you had won originally…
SANTORUM: Yes.
BLITZER: — in Iowa, it may have given you some momentum going into New Hampshire.
SANTORUM: Well, with an eight vote, look, I — I don’t blame Iowa. I mean they — you know, they had to go through the process that — actually, if you think about it, it moved from eight votes to 34. Usually in an election, that — that kind of change is insignificant. So I — I don’t — the state of Iowa did — the Republican Party of Iowa did a good job. I’m very happy that they — they were — they got, you know, 99.9 percent of the polling places in and — and we feel very, very good that — that we not only won, but that we — we — we pulled off a huge upset.
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