The Republican party’s conservative base has another tantalizing option as of today: former Senator Rick Santorum has added his name of the list of GOPers vying for the 2012 Republican nomination at a time when President Barack Obama is looking increasingly vulnerable as bad news about the economy mounts.
ABC’s George Stephanopoulos writes:
“We’re ready to announce that we are going to be in this race and we’re in it to win,” Rick Santorum told me.
Santorum, a former two-term Senator from Pennsylvania, will formally kick-off his campaign in his home state later this morning near a coal mine where his grandfather worked after immigrating from Italy.
The father of seven has been a frequent sight in the early voting states. This week is no exception with a trip to Iowa tomorrow followed by another trip to the first in the nation primary state on Wednesday. But he’s trailing in the polls. The latest Gallup poll has him at 2 percent behind Romney’s 19, Palin’s 15 and Ron Paul’s 13.
Santorum rose to the third seat in the GOP Senate leadership but lost his 2006 bid for a third term to Senator Bob Casey by 18 points. Since then he has served as a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and as a Fox News analyst, until they suspended his contract on March 2 while he debated his 2012 plans.
Here’s the ABC interview:
Santorum is yet another candidate who is unlikely to be appealing to independent voters in the general election, but who could break out of the pack as Republican voters look for someone who seems to have passion, who can take it to Obama, and who can articulate 21st century conservative values — who can make a convincing case that he/she can run a serious campaign and win.
Former U.S. Senator Rick Santorum declared his candidacy for president of the United States on Monday, vowing he’s “in it to win it.”
Santorum, a favorite among his party’s social conservatives, chose to confirm his plans during an appearance Monday morning on ABC’s “Good Morning America” at the banner-draped site he chose in the western Pennsylvania coalfields for his formal announcement.
In the network interview, Santorum accused President Barack Obama of having a weak foreign policy, saying he doesn’t feel he has stood up sufficiently to Iran and asserting he has done too little to speak out against Syrian President Bashir Assad for the violence there.
The announcement comes as no surprise. The Republican hopeful signaled his intention to officially kick off his campaign for the White House last week after making numerous trips to the key primary states of Iowa, South Carolina and New Hampshire in recent months.
The latest polls have shown Santorum to be trailing more well-known Republicans vying for the party’s nomination to take on President Barack Obama in 2012. Findings from one survey released by Gallup last week suggest the former senator lacks strong name recognition among voters on the right side of the aisle.
Santorum, 53, known for staunchly conservative positions on welfare reform and homosexuality, has already been campaigning in early voting states, including New Hampshire and South Carolina, where he won two informal Republican straw polls.
But he is at the bottom of the Republican pack in the slow-moving national primary election race for the party’s presidential nomination, garnering only 2 percent support in a Gallup poll of Republican voters last month.
Political insiders say his presidential prospects are weak, partly because he lost his Senate seat by a wide 59 to 41 percent margin in 2006, after sticking to his support for Social Security reforms that had soured on voters.
On Monday, he backed a Republican plan to transform the Medicare healthcare program for the elderly into a system that would help beneficiaries pay for private health insurance.
“Seniors can, in fact, do this. It does save money and it’s going to be a good thing for them and it’s going to be a great thing for our country,” Santorum said.
The plan, proposed by House of Representatives Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, has brought a backlash from voters and prompted some Republicans to back away from it.
But Santorum said his support for Medicare reform remained firm and presented his unwavering positions of the past as a political asset.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.