On the eve of the Illinois primary

On the eve of the Illinois primary, where he hopes a commanding gucci handbags victory will start extinguishing the insurgent fire of Rick Santorum, Mr. Romney took the luxury of ignoring his Republican rivals. It was one part buoyant confidence and one part symbolic opportunity that led Mr. Romney to deliver an economic speech just a short stroll from Mr. Obama’s actual backyard. The Republican primary calendar is only slightly beyond the halfway mark, with Mr. Santorum and, to a lesser extent, Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul, still scrapping for delegates. Mr. Santorum said he presented the sharpest contrast to Mr. Obama, while Mr. Gingrich was off the campaign trail strategizing about how to stop Mr. Romney from getting the nomination and Mr. Paul was all but invisible. Hopeful that the results in Illinois could at last begin rallying the party to his side, Mr. Romney sought to signal that he is moving to the next stage — whether the voters are ready or not — and assailed the president by name more than a dozen times in the span of 18 minutes without mentioning the other Republican candidates. “Our choice will not be one of party or personality,” Mr. Romney said during a lecture-style speech, taking the rare move of trading his jeans and open-collar shirt for a suit and tie and reading from a prompter. “This election will be about principle.” In the speech, Mr. Romney avowed a commitment to conservative economic principles and deregulation. But in citing examples of what he said was the stifling hand of the Obama administration, he presented two specific black gucci belt examples, including the phasing out of the incandescent light bulb, that turned out to have their roots in actions taken by President George W. Bush’s administration. Mr. Romney did not directly mention Mr. Santorum, but the Romney team and its allies were intently focused on him, trying to bury him in negative advertising. In Illinois, Mr. Romney had a spending advantage of at least 6 to 1 over Mr. Santorum. But the voters of Illinois, perhaps including some of the same crossover Republicans who helped contribute to Mr. Obama’s own political rise, will now help write the next chapter of the Republican primary. Mr. Romney’s aides believe a comfortable victory could be at hand on Tuesday, but Mr. Santorum and the rest of the field showed no signs of stepping aside. As Mr. Romney previewed general election themes in a speech at the University of Chicago, Mr. Santorum spoke about 120 miles west in Dixon, the boyhood home of Ronald Reagan. He argued that his campaign, unlike Mr. Romney’s, was not built around the rises and falls in the economy. “I don’t care what the unemployment rate’s going to be,” Mr. Santorum said, a remark that drew criticism from the Romney campaign. “It doesn’t matter. My campaign doesn’t hinge on unemployment rates and growth rates.” The Illinois results will provide an important test of whether Mr. Romney can regain for good the sense of inevitability he has had sporadically since the New Year — winning it in New Hampshire; losing it in South Carolina; winning it in Florida; losing it in Minnesota and Colorado and last week in Mississippi and Alabama. And so it is that Mr. Romney and the “super PAC” supporting him, Restore Our Future, have pounded Mr. Santorum on television and radio here, especially on broadcast television, where the Romney forces have spent louis vuitton women shoes at least $2 million and the Santorum forces, which have advertised mostly on cable, have spent at least $60,000 according to an analysis by Kantar Media/CMAG.