STORY HIGHLIGHTS
- After Santorum drops out, the campaign shifts to general election mode
- President Obama continues his push for millionaires to pay higher taxes
- Mitt Romney attacks Obama's economic policies as obstacles to growth
- An Obama campaign video highlights Romney's conservative stances
Washington (CNN) -- President Barack Obama and his certain Republican opponent in November, Mitt Romney, shifted to full general election mode Wednesday with messages intended to rally their bases and portray the other as threats to future progress.
The day after Rick Santorum suspended his bid for the GOP nomination to clear the way for Romney, the former Massachusetts governor planned events focusing on small businesses as well as a conference call by surrogates to criticize Obama's economic policies.
Obama, meanwhile, continued his push for Congress to pass a tax measure that would ensure that millionaires -- such as Romney -- pay a higher tax rate than middle-class workers.
"It's just plain wrong that middle-class Americans pay a higher share of their income in taxes than some millionaires," Obama told a White House event, flanked by millionaires who support the proposed measure.
Republicans want to cut taxes for the wealthy, which would mean cutting spending on programs that spur economic growth and benefit the middle class, senior citizens and the poor, Obama argued.
"In America, prosperity has never just trickled down from the wealthy few," he said in a swipe at GOP economic policy.
Also Wednesday, the Obama campaign released a video highlighting Romney's conservative stances on issues such as abortion rights, health care reform and immigration reform. The video concludes with Romney's declaration on the campaign trail that he was "a severely conservative Republican governor."
The competing messages were attempts by both sides to frame what is expected to be a close and vicious general election campaign in a favorable perspective.
Obama portrays Romney and Republicans as protectors of the wealthy at the expense of the middle class, while Romney and his party say Obama has stifled economic recovery and failed to effectively tackle deficit reduction.
With Santorum's departure from the Republican race, Romney is now the certain GOP nominee. He still needs to win several hundred delegates to clinch the nomination, but Santorum was his top remaining challenger, and Tuesday's announcement leaves Romney's path unhindered.
However, Romney's campaign still struggles to generate enthusiasm among the GOP conservative base, which questions his more moderate stances as Massachusetts governor.
Sources said Romney wants Santorum, who had strong support among social conservatives, including Christian evangelicals, to quickly endorse his campaign. While Romney and Santorum aides said the former U.S. senator from Pennsylvania will work to defeat Obama, it was unclear when or if Santorum would offer a full-throated endorsement for Romney.
In his announcement Tuesday that he was suspending his campaign, Santorum never mentioned Romney.
Santorum has consistently said the party needed a true conservative candidate -- himself -- to defeat Obama, and he has relentlessly attacked Romney's support for health care reforms in Massachusetts that included a mandate for coverage similar to the 2010 federal health care law despised by conservatives.
Romney's difficulty with conservatives was evident Tuesday, as two groups known for right-wing stances on social issues commended Santorum's campaign effort but made no mention of Romney.
Santorum's announcement followed the weekend hospitalization of Santorum's 3-year-old daughter Isabella, and in the face of tightening poll numbers in Pennsylvania ahead of the April 24 primary.
"Ladies and gentlemen, we made the decision to get into this race around our kitchen table, against all the odds," Santorum told a news conference, flanked by emotional family members. "We made a decision over the weekend that while the presidential race for us is over, and I will suspend my campaign effective today, we are not done fighting."
Santorum and Romney spoke before the announcement, and Romney told supporters in Delaware that Santorum "will continue to have a major role in the Republican Party."
"We exchanged our thoughts about going forward, and we both have a great deal of interest in seeing the country taken in a very different path," said Romney, who is making his second bid for the GOP nomination. He added, "I look forward to his work in helping to assure victories for Republicans across the country in November."
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, another GOP contender, who's trailing well behind Romney and Santorum, also congratulated Santorum for a "remarkable campaign" that showed the appeal of conservative principles.
Both Gingrich and the other challenger, Texas Rep. Ron Paul, said they intended to stay in the race to the Republican convention in August.
"I think it makes it clearer and simpler," Gingrich said of Santorum's decision while campaigning in North Carolina later Tuesday. "There is one conservative voice in the race, and then there is a moderate, and I think [that] makes it easier to articulate and to focus on the platform issues I want to focus on."
In a statement by his campaign, Gingrich said he "humbly" asked Santorum supporters to check out his conservative record and support him.
The Obama campaign immediately took aim at Romney after Santorum's announcement, with campaign manager Jim Messina saying it was "no surprise that Mitt Romney finally was able to grind down his opponents under an avalanche of negative ads."
"The more the American people see of Mitt Romney, the less they like him and the less they trust him," Messina said in a statement. "While calling himself the 'ideal candidate' for the tea party, he has promised to return to the same policies that created the economic crisis and has alienated women, middle-class families and Hispanic Americans."
Santorum advisers said the final decision to suspend the campaign, which allows him to continue raising money and probably keep control of delegates won so far, came Monday night and was based on three factors.
Santorum needed the Texas primary on May 29, with 154 delegates at stake, to be winner-take-all instead of the proportional allocation system based on vote results now in place. However, a complex process for changing the allocation method made that unlikely, they said.
In addition, Santorum needed Gingrich to step aside so Santorum could bring together the conservative right, but Gingrich stayed in the race, they said. Santorum also needed to win Pennsylvania, which remained possible but would require large amounts of time and money against an expected Romney offensive there, the advisers said.
Santorum had canceled two events earlier Tuesday while adding an afternoon event that turned out to be his withdrawal announcement. Spokesman Hogan Gidley said the two morning events were canceled to allow Santorum and his wife, Karen, to "settle in at home" with their young daughter, known as Bella.
Bella was born with trisomy 18, a serious chromosomal condition that interferes with development. Half of patients with the condition do not survive past the first week of life, according to the National Institutes of Health.
Meanwhile, a poll Tuesday shows Romney trailing Obama in a head-to-head matchup, though voters remain split on which presidential contender is best equipped to handle the economy.
The survey, from Washington Post/ABC News, showed that 51% of Americans would choose Obama if the election were held now, compared with 44% for Romney.
According to the polling data, Americans are divided on which candidate would best handle economic issues: Forty-seven percent favored Romney, while 43% named Obama. When asked which man would be better at creating jobs, 46% named Obama and 43% said Romney. Both margins were within the poll's 3.5 percentage point sampling error.
Voters were less divided on other key issues. Fifty-three percent said Obama was best poised to handle international affairs, compared with 36% who said Romney. Conversely, when asked which man would do a better job of reducing the federal deficit, 51% said Romney and 38% said Obama.
In terms of likability, Obama held a clear advantage, with 64% of Americans polled saying the president was a more friendly and likable person, a more than 2-to-1 advantage over Romney, who was at 26%.
The serious gender gap between the two candidates -- also seen in recent Gallup and CNN/ORC polls -- also appeared in the new poll. Obama had the support of 57% of women, compared with 38% who said they backed Romney, while the former Massachusetts governor had the backing of 52% of men, compared with 44% who backed Obama.
Among another important voting bloc, independents, the poll shows a much tighter race, with 48% backing Romney compared with 46% for Obama, also within the survey's sampling error.
CNN's latest estimate of the GOP delegate tally shows Romney with 659, Santorum with 275, Gingrich with 140 and Paul with 71. It takes 1,144 delegates to clinch the nomination.
New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island and Delaware vote on April 24, in addition to Pennsylvania. In all, 231 delegates are up for grabs in the five states.
The goal now for Gingrich and Paul is to prevent Romney from reaching the 1,144-delegate threshold before the convention. While all but conceding the GOP race, Gingrich said Sunday that he won't give up on trying to influence the party's platform that emerges going into the general election.
CNN's Jessica Yellin contributed to this report.
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