Students respond to Santorum's exit

When Rick Santorum announced he was suspending his presidential campaign Tuesday night, it cleared the path for former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney to secure the GOP nominee bid.

And at the University of Massachusetts, some students like 20-year-old John Santos are encouraged by the most recent political developments.

“I am pleased regarding Rick Santorum’s dropping out of the race. He was not my first choice,” said Santos, former vice president and secretary of the UMass College Republicans. “I believe it is more important to have a strong candidate, preferably the most conservative one that people can stand behind.”

Nathan Fatal, a 20-year-old political student who is the founder of the New England Objectivist Society, said, “conservatives should be more aware of what it is they’re conserving.” He took issues with Santorum’s stances on gay marriage and abortion, policies he believes limits personal freedoms.

But Fatal isn’t thrilled with Romney, either.

“I don’t believe he is a true advocate of freedom, that he really cares about our rights,” he said. “I’ve never been able to trust him, he just parrots what everyone else is saying.”

Santos believes that Romney has a real chance to defeat Obama in the general election, highlighting factors such as rising gas prices and a federal government “that completely disregards the will of the people.”

Neither Santos nor Fatal said they’d be participating actively in the upcoming presidential campaign.

And Fatal is leaning toward voting for a third party candidate, Gary Johnson, the former governor of New Mexico who is running on a ticket with the Libertarian Party.

He would have liked to see Johnson stay with the Republican Party, even though, he acknowledged, “I don’t think he would have a chance either way.”

“I don’t think much of any of the Republican candidates,” he said. “I don’t know that someone running on the Republican Party platform could really ever satisfy what I want to see in a candidate, what I want to see in a leader.”

Romney spoke at a Hartford, Conn. lecture Wednesday in an attempt to build his voting base among women.

“Let’s bring (Obama) back to the fact that it is the real war on women that has been waged by his economic policies… Let’s hammer day in and day out what has happened under his policies,” said Romney.

According to Politico.com’s calendar, Romney will speak next with Newt Gingrich on Friday afternoon at the National Rifle Association Dinner.

Chris Shores is a Spring 2012 USA TODAY Collegiate Correspondent. Learn more about him here.

This story originally appeared on the USA TODAY College blog, a news source produced for college students by student journalists. The blog closed in September of 2017.