Rick Santorum, who has previously grumbled that Ron Paul was acting as a wing man for Mitt Romney, has now complained that the Drudge Report is backing the former Massachusetts governor.

In an interview with Bill Cunningham of 700AM WLW out of Cincinnati, Santorum was asked whether he had hung up on Scott Sloan, another of the station’s hosts, on Thursday. “It’s on The Drudge Report that you hung up on Scott Sloan,” Cunningham said.

Santorum responded: “That’s baloney. I was driving and we lost the call and I called him back two minutes later and we finished the conversation. Drudge, again showing for Romney, gets the facts wrong.”

Sloan later said that it was a “bald face lie” that Santorum called him back.

Allegations that Matt Drudge’s eponymous website is sweet on Romney have been around for months and have gained traction since voting in the GOP race began on January 3rd. Certainly, the proponderance of stories that are favourable towards Romney has been striking at times, as detailed by the Huffington Post’s Sam Stein here.

In January, Fred Thompson, a Gingrich surrogate, said on NBC’s Meet The Press that the Romney campaign “has Drudge in their back pocket”. This week, however, Gingrich was so delighted by a “Lazarus Rising Again?!” headline on Drudge, linking to a Hot Air article, that he publicised it on Facebook.

Santorum supporters are currently the most upset with Drudge. At a Santorum rally in Phoenix, Arizona on February 21st, Bryan Blunt, 39, a director of a cable television company from nearby Mesa, waved a sign that read: “Drudge Backs Mitt. AZ Picks Rick!!” right in front of the stage.

For most of that day, Drudge had led his site with a banner headline on a story about “Santorum’s Satan Warning” – story about controversial comments made in 2008 that forced Santorum onto the defensive.

Afterwards, Blunt told me: “Drudge is obviously in the tank for Romney and really anti-Santorum. The establishment is trying to tell us who we need to vote for. It’s insulting for arms of the media to tell me that I’m dumb or I don’t know what I’m talking about and they know better than I do.”

He said that both Drudge and Fox News had now joined the GOP establishment. “Drudge was not part of the establishment in my mind until this election cycle. Now he is absolutely part of the mainstream media. He’s not the only one. Fox News is guilty of it. When Rick had his trifecta [on February 7th] I was watching Fox News and it looked like they all stepped in poop.”

Whatever the truth about Drudge’s alleged support for Romney, Blunt turned out to be wrong about Arizona picking Santorum – on election night last Tuesday, Romney won by 20 points.

(Source: Daily Mail UK)