Santorum Trades Illinois for Gettysburg

He was previously scheduled to watch the returns at a location in Elgin, Illinois

Wednesday, Mar 21, 2012 | Updated 10:14 PM CDT

Dealt a resounding defeat in Illinois' presidential primary, Republican Rick Santorum brushed off the latest loss to rival Mitt Romney and told his supporters on Tuesday to "saddle up like Reagan did in the cowboy movies" and help him narrow a seemingly insurmountable deficit in delegates. He spoke to supporters from an event in Gettysburg, Penn.

Santorum Addresses Supporters

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Rick Santorum traded an election night address from the Land of Lincoln for a location made famous by Lincoln.

Santorum changed course and decided to watch Tuesday's Illinois primary in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. He was previously scheduled to watch the returns at a location in Elgin, Illinois.

"We won the areas that conservatives and Republicans populate," the former Pennsylvania senator told several hundred cheering supporters in the ballroom of the historic Gettysburg Hotel about the results in Illinois, where he won large swaths of territory outside the Chicago metropolitan area. "We're happy about that. We're happy about the delegates we're going to get, too."

Santorum's campaign billed the event as an election-night celebration, referring to the Illinois balloting, as he and the other three Republican presidential candidates jockey for delegates to the national nominating convention.