By Catalina Camia

and Susan Page

| USA Today

Fresh from his three-state sweep, a confident Rick Santorum said he is prepared for an onslaught from Mitt Romney as he tries to make his case that he’s the best conservative to take on President Obama.

Santorum, speaking to CNN Wednesday morning, derided Romney for trying to portray himself as a Washington outsider and for repeatedly talking about his credentials as a former CEO.

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The former Pennsylvania senator stressed that Romney’s stands on health care, "cap and trade" legislation and government bailouts are the wrong positions for a GOP nominee.

"Mr. Private Sector was Mr. Big Government when he was out there running for the private sector," Santorum told CNN.

In a separate interview with CNN, Romney adviser Stuart Stevens said Romney’s campaign will be tougher in making contrasts with Santorum. The goal will be to paint Santorum, a former two-term senator, as a Washington insider.

"I think we’ll see differences in approach that will be explored. Rick Santorum tonight was fairly aggressive in his contrasts, and I think we’ll see differences," Stevens told CNN on Tuesday night. "Look, I just don’t think it’s a time when people are looking to Washington to solve problems with Washington."

Although he lost his 2006 re-election bid to the Senate by 18 percentage points, Santorum stressed on Wednesday that he hasn’t changed his positions since that race. He made an unveiled dig at Romney, who has been criticized for flip flopping on issues.

"I stand by the fact that I ... wasn’t a well-oiled weather vane out there looking for where the American public is going. I stood by principle and I’ll do that as president," Santorum said.

Asked whether he is concerned about Romney’s fundraising advantage, Santorum said he wasn’t worried about money. He estimates he raised about $250,000 Tuesday night as he was winning the Minnesota and Colorado caucuses and the non-binding Missouri primary.

"We feel like going forward we’re going to have the money we need to make the case we want to make," he said.

Romney, who says he’s on a clear path to the Republican presidential nomination, hit a speed bump Tuesday night as Santorum won an upset victory in the Colorado caucuses after scoring easy wins in the Minnesota caucuses and the non-binding Missouri primary.

"Tonight was a victory for the voices of our party, conservatives and Tea Party people," Santorum told a cheering rally in St. Charles, Mo., before the final results in Colorado were known. He called President Obama an elitist "who thinks he’s smarter than you" and Romney a flawed standard-bearer who would be unable to draw sharp contrasts with him in the fall.

"Ladies and gentlemen, I don’t stand here today to be the conservative alternative to Mitt Romney," Santorum declared. "I stand here to be the conservative alternative to Barack Obama."

In Denver, after the earlier races were called, Romney told a more subdued group of supporters that it had been "a good night for Rick Santorum." Colorado’s returns were being reported more slowly than in Minnesota and Missouri.

The results didn’t affect the math of the delegate count -- no delegates were bound by the vote -- but it did alter the momentum of the race.

For Romney, the setbacks were likely to raise questions about his claim of inevitability -- he had targeted only Obama on the stump Tuesday, as though the GOP nomination already was his -- and carried a particular sting in Minnesota, a state he decisively won four years ago.

Gingrich made no mention of the results on Wednesday during his only scheduled public appearance for the next two days. He told workers at a metal manufacturing plant in Cleveland that he can lead the nation to an era of prosperity and security.