Mitt Romney touts conservative bona fides at CPAC

Mitt Romney suffered a trio of defeats this week at the hands of Rick Santorum. Photograph: Ron Sachs/CNP/Corbis

Mitt Romney attempted to get his presidential campaign back on track Friday with a speech aimed at winning over conservatives at their mega-conference in Washington.

Romney, after suffering a trio of defeats at the hands of rival Rick Santorum on Tuesday, dispensed with his normal stump speech and instead set out his credentials as a conservative to a largely sceptical audience. He used the word "conservative" more than 20 times in his speech and described himself, in an odd choice of words, as "severely conservative".

Santorum and Newt Gingrich also appeared before crowded rooms, each receiving standing ovations Friday at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), the biggest gathering of conservatives in the country.

Organisers put the attendance at 10,500 and the entrance to the main hall was filled to capacity, with late-comers turned away.

Romney seldom discusses social issues such as abortion and same-sex marriages on the campaign trail but he spoke about both, a sign of how desperate he was to woo the CPAC audience. There is danger in this; by moving to the right to win over conservatives he risks saying things that will alienate independents in a general election.

The results of a CPAC straw poll of the presidential candidates are scheduled to be released Saturday.

Santorum's mid-week victories in Colorado, Missouri and Minnesota renewed doubts about Romney's status as the Republican front-runner for the nomination.

A win in the straw poll would help Romney as would victory in the Maine caucuses, also due to be announced Saturday. The fourth candidate in the presidential race, Ron Paul, has invested a lot of time and effort in Maine and is hopeful of a surprise victory.

At the CPAC event, Romney portrayed himself as a battling conservative who had fought and won in the Democratic heartland as governor of Massachusetts. He said he "fought against long odds in a deep blue state but I was a severely conservative Republican governor."

He seemed to have anticipated applause for this but it never came. Conservatives view him as a moderate who made too many compromises while governor of Massachusetts.

The applause did come, however, when he rejected the criticism from Gingrich about how he had made his fortune with Bain Capital, an investment group.

"I did some of the very things conservatism is designed for," he said. "I started new businesses and turned around broken ones, and I'm not ashamed to say I was successful in doing it."

Romney avoided directly attacking his opponents, though he took a sly dig at Santorum, linking him to federal spending excesses while he was a Pennsylvania senator.

"Let me tell you, any politician who tries to convince you that they hated Washington so much that they just couldn't leave, well, that's the same politician who will try to sell you a bridge to nowhere," Romney said, a reference to Santorum's support for the infamous Alaska Bridge to Nowhere.

Santorum can expect much worse in the weeks to come when the Super Pacs backing Romney begin to air negative ads.

For his part, Santorum had no qualms about getting personal with Romney, suggesting that money alone could not beat Obama. He stressed there was a need for a bold contrast in ideas, which Romney, who had failed to win over the conservative grassroots, could not supply.

"Why would an undecided voter vote for a candidate of a party that the party's not excited about?" Santorum asked.

Santorum received several standing ovations throughout his speech which concentrated on social issues, in particular the controversy over Catholic objections to Obama's health insurance scheme that would cover contraception.

"Now he's telling the Catholic church that they are forced to pay for things that are against their basic tenets and teachings, against their first amendment right," Santorum said.

Gingrich, the last of the presidential candidates to speak – Ron Paul opted against attending CPAC, preferring to campaign in Maine – avoided criticising his opponents and instead reiterated the programme he would introduce if he was president, starting with the repeal of Obama's healthcare reforms.

Gringrich also said he would overturn 40% of Obama's policies on the first day of his presidency, a nice piece of rhetoric but difficult to deliver on, given that Democrats are likely to have enough senators left to block such moves.

Gingrich is also facing a major funding problem. Bloomberg News reported that Gingrich's sole big backer, the Las Vegas casino and hotel owner, Sheldon Adelson, is not planning to give any more money on top of the $11m his family has already given.

Santorum, Romney and Gingrich all do share one problem at the CPAC: none of them is generating much enthusiasm and no clear favourite has emerged.

Bernadette Repisky, 46, a Tea Party member attending CPAC for the first time, is supporting Santorum but had hoped that Congressman Allan West, a favourite of her party, would stand. She had earlier supported Michele Bachmann, she said, and then Herman Cain. If Romney eventually wins, she will support him.

"The main thing is to get Obama, that socialist-Marxist dictator out off the White House," she said.