Rick Santorum

Now it's Romney vs. Obama. With that in mind and a bruising primary fight finally behind him, Mitt Romney bathed in the praise Tuesday night of a cheering crowd of Chester County Republicans - finally, their party's presidential nominee in all but name. Hours earlier, Rick Santorum, the former Massachusetts governor's last significant GOP rival, suspended his campaign amid a family health crisis and a growing chorus calls from party leaders for him to drop out of the race.

If Mitt Romney secures the Republican presidential nomination, he might want to start worrying about whether Rick Santorum is going to give him the John McCain treatment. Twice in the 2008 primaries, as McCain was closing in on the nomination, Santorum took to his newspaper column to trash him as moderate. McCain "has too often joined the very people who seek to destroy and replace what we fight to conserve and improve," Santorum wrote. "And so we wonder: Is this the man we can trust to take our case to the American people?"

WASHINGTON - The ill daughter of Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum has been taken to the hospital. Santorum's campaign said Friday that 3-year-old Bella had been returned to the hospital. She has the rare genetic condition Trisomy 18 and was hospitalized earlier this year with pneumonia, prompting Santorum to take a campaign break before the Florida primary. The campaign did not identify the hospital or say why her parents took Bella there. Spokesman Hogan Gidley said in a written statement, "The family requests prayers and privacy as Bella works her way to recovery.

As the common thinking goes, Philadelphia's suburbs are home to just the sort of moderate Republican who is comfortable with Mitt Romney: well-educated, well-off, and well-disposed to his business background. But if Romney's last major challenger, Rick Santorum, is to secure the home-state primary win he describes as crucial to his campaign, the former Pennsylvania senator can't afford to count those suburbs out. So far, local Republican leaders say, Santorum has shown signs of doing just that.

WASHINGTON - Republican presidential hopeful Rick Santorum met privately with conservative leaders on Thursday to craft plans to try to stop Mitt Romney's march to the nomination. Pressuring rival Newt Gingrich to leave the race was part of their overall strategy. The northern Virginia meeting included a host of fiscal and social conservatives who have long doubted Romney's conservative credentials. "Like halftime at a football game, you go into the locker room to gauge what has been working and what hasn't," meeting participant Richard A. Viguerie, chairman of ConservativeHQ.com, said in a statement.

If the Republican primary season so far has been any indication, Pennsylvanians should be expecting three weeks of never-ending, eyeball-straining political attack ads as the GOP presidential contest arrives here in advance of the April 24 vote. But don't change that channel just yet. Turns out that Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, and the super political action committees backing their candidacies have not yet shelled out the dough for ad time here at the rate seen when they carpet-bombed earlier primary states such as Florida and Wisconsin.

WASHINGTON - The ill daughter of Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum has been taken to the hospital. Santorum's campaign said Friday that 3-year-old Bella had been returned to the hospital. She has the rare genetic condition Trisomy 18 and was hospitalized earlier this year with pneumonia. Santorum's campaign did not identify the hospital or elaborate on why her parents took Bella there. The former Pennsylvania senator is spending a few days off the campaign trail for Easter.

Rick Santorum met Thursday with conservative leaders in Virginia to brainstorm possible paths forward in the Republican presidential race, as Mitt Romney cruised across Pennsylvania with a presumptive nominee's focus on the general election. For Santorum, the April 24 primary here looms as a make-or-break moment after he lost three states Tuesday to Romney. Two new polls showed Santorum at risk of losing the popular vote in the state he represented in Congress for 16 years. During a 15-minute morning stop in Harrisburg to tour his new campaign headquarters, Romney did not mention Santorum and barely acknowledged a primary.

Rick Santorum met Thursday with conservative leaders in Virginia to brainstorm possible paths forward in the Republican presidential race, as Mitt Romney cruised across Pennsylvania with a presumptive nominee's focus on the general election. For Santorum, the April 24 primary here looms as a make-or-break moment after he lost three states Tuesday to Romney. Two new polls showed Santorum at risk of losing the popular vote in the state he represented in Congress for 16 years. During a 15-minute morning stop in Harrisburg to tour his new campaign headquarters, Romney did not mention Santorum and barely acknowledged a primary.