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On the “Tonight Show” Jay Leno told Rick Santorum that his endorsement (that‘s what we’re calling it) of Mitt Romney seemed “kind of tepid,” given that it was sent out in an email at 11 p.m. Monday. “I think we just needed some time,” Santorum said. “It was a rough and tumble campaign. I can‘t say that it would have been an easy thing the next day to turn around and say ’oh you know, lets just go forward.’ It was tough. So I wanted an opportunity to sort of think about it a little bit… Over the weekend I...

Richard Viguerie, a veteran conservative activist and top Santorum supporter, tells National Review Online that Santorum is “reengineering” his presidential campaign. “You can’t repeat the same behavior and expect different results,” he says. “We’ve got to do things different. We’ve got to reengineer the campaign. We’ve got to add things, take things out, and make changes. Everyone recognizes that, from the candidate on down.” Earlier today, Viguerie, along with a group of movement leaders, met with Santorum at an office in northern Virginia. For over an hour, they discussed ways to revive his bid. “We came up with a number...

I’ve known Rick Santorum for 22 years, having first met him in 1990 before he’d won his first campaign for Congress. I interviewed him on WORD-FM, an evangelical Christian radio station where I was a frequent guest host (and eventually a full-time host) early in his campaign. If I was not the first media personality to interview Rick, I was one of the first. I had Rick as a guest at the request of my friend, Mark Rogers, who was running Rick’s campaign. Over the years I interviewed Rick at least a dozen times and debated him several times as...

(Sigh...) How else can I start? I support Rick Santorum, donated to him, but I'm losing count of the times I watch him on a live interview and feel the need for a facepalm. God love you, Rick, but you do not think well on your feet (or perhaps someone working for isn't doing his job prepping you). When Chris asked Rick about siding with "big labor", the right answer was that "there are valid reasons for labor unions and I'll support them when it's fair to do so. Unions get a bad rap when union leaders abuse their leverage...

By the time Mitt Romney arrives in Wisconsin Friday – his first campaign stop in the state before its GOP primary on Tuesday – his challenger Rick Santorum will have already become a familiar face. Mr. Santorum has been in Wisconsin since last weekend and has dined, bowled, and played shuffleboard with residents in every pocket of the state. He’s even tossed a football at Lambeau Field, home of the Green Bay Packers. Santorum’s once-generous lead in Wisconsin is eroding. In February, the former US senator polled at 34 percent among the state’s likely Republican voters, while Mr. Romney, the...

GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum on Thursday took GOP frontrunner Mitt Romney to task for his past as a self-described “independent” who claimed he did not want to “return to the days of Reagan-Bush. Santorum, speaking to supporters at the Jelly Belly factory – which had honored President Ronald Reagan in the past for promoting the jelly bean – asked which candidate would be pull together the “Reagan coalition” and win swings states, which are “vitally important” for winning the presidential election.(Snip) “Governor Romney said that after the Etch-a-Sketch flap that he was going to run as a conservative in...

FAIRFIELD, Calif. — Republican leaders and voters, frustrated by their party's prolonged presidential contest, are increasingly coalescing behind front-runner Mitt Romney. Yet Rick Santorum on Thursday urged conservatives not to forsake their principles under pressure. He did so by conjuring the memory of Ronald Reagan, still the conservative icon, at an oddly symbolic place: the jelly bean factory that created the former president's favorite treats. "Let them know, conservatives all across this country have not given up the fight, we're not going to concede to the moderate establishment who wants to convince everybody that it's over, it's time to go...

Newt Gingrich's campaign has asked the Tennessee Republican Party....to not seat Knoxville state Sen. Stacey Campfield as a Gingrich delegate at the national convention. Campfield, who served as a state co-chair for Gingrich's campaign, abruptly switched his support to Santorum days before the March 6 "Super Tuesday" election. "Please be advised that Stacey Campfield does not have the consent of the Newt Gingrich for President Campaign to be seated as a delegate at the Republican National Convention," wrote John Fluharty, the campaign's director of delegate access, in a Thursday letter to the state GOP committee. "As a matter of information,...

Conservative Frontrunner Santorum Wins Majority against Romney (if Gingrich steps aside)! Popular, young and strong on Values, dynamic Senator Rick Santorum wins, with a large, absolute Majority of Votes, against the Unpopular, old and flip-flop Millionaire Mitt Romney, if Gingrich (who has lost in too many States), at last, steps aside, recent Polls reveal : For example, the Front Runner among Conservatives, Santorum, could crush Romney, with 55 % against only 33 % respectively, if Gingrich stepped aside, i.e. with a Winning margin up to + 21%, according to the latest Luisiana Polls by Magelan Strategies BR, of the 19...

April will be a tough month for Rick Santorum. The primary schedule has nine contests next month ... three on Tuesday, a non-binding caucus in Missouri (again!), and five primaries on the 24th. The two most likely states for a Santorum win are winner-take-all Wisconsin on the 3rd and the candidate's home state of Pennsylvania on the 24th. Santorum trails in the latest Wisconsin polling, and a new poll by Frank & Marshall College suggests that his support back home has declined significantly: Rick Santorum appeared to be the Republican presidential candidate to beat in Pennsylvania a month ago.With the...

Rick Santorum is likely to win Louisiana’s Saturday primary but a victory there won’t help him much, say Republican strategists. “Winning Louisiana does nothing in the grand scheme of things,” said GOP strategist Tyler Harber. “It won’t give a huge boost of support to Rick Santorum. Winning these contests isn’t as important. It’s now about winning the delegates.”

My Message to Rick Santorum March 23, 2012 Not too long ago, I had asked a woman from Pennsylvania what she thought about Rick Santorum. Knowing that she was as conservative and as Republican as I am, I was surprised at her response. She said, “He is the worst. Those of us who know him best have nothing but contempt for him. He is not an honest person and certainly would not hesitate to stab a fellow politician in the back.” That was a few weeks ago, but I have learned what a tawdry character Santorum is. He is a...

Santorum: 'I Would Never Vote for Barack Obama Over Any Republican' MAR 23, 2012 • BY DANIEL HALPER Rick Santorum is pushing back against what he's calling a misinterpreted quotation, in which he's being reported as saying he'd vote for Barack Obama over Mitt Romney in the 2012 presidential contest. "I would never vote for Barack Obama over any Republican," Santorum says in a statement, "and to suggest otherwise is preposterous." Santorum blames Mitt Romney's camp for "distort[ing]" and "distract[ing]" voters. "This is just another attempt by the Romney Campaign to distort and distract the media and voters from the...

Rick Santorum's latest attempt to use a Mitt Romney aide's "Etch-A-Sketch" remark against the Republican front-runner instead gave his rival a chance to fire back on Thursday, after Santorum seemed to say he'd rather see President Obama reelected than send Romney to the White House. Speaking at an event in Texas, Santorum again made the case that Romney spokesman Eric Fehrnstrom's comments Wednesday on CNN about a "reset" of the campaign if Romney clinched the nomination showed the former Massachusetts governor's efforts to appeal to conservatives were insincere. "You win by giving people the opportunity to see a different vision...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Former senator Bob Dole says GOP presidential hopeful Rick Santorum is "getting close to the point" where he'll have to decide whether to stay in the race for the nomination or drop out. In a telephone interview Wednesday, Dole told The Associated Press he was speaking from the experience of staying in the 1988 GOP nomination fight too long.

In 2008, Republicans argued that Barack Obama couldn't be an effective president because he had never run anything. Since his inauguration, they have never let go of this argument. In a typical exchange during the BP oil spill, Sean Hannity and GOP strategist Ed Gillespie agreed that the feeling America was on the wrong track could be traced "back to the fact that [Obama] doesn't have executive experience." Indeed, when Rick Santorum was praising Sarah Palin as a vice presidential pick in 2008 at a speech at Ave Maria (yes, the same speech where he talked about Satan), he cited...

News sources have confirmed Jim Runyon, a Gingrich delegate in IL has agreed in principle with 9 other Gingrich delegates in the 4 CD's that Rick Santorum failed to field a slate of delegates, that they will pledge their support for Santorum should he reach Tampa. This will have the effect of eliminating the delegate disadvantage in IL that Santorum was facing, particularly in the 13th Congressional District. It's now possible Santorum may split the delegate allocations by CD with Mitt Romney, or may in face take the lead, despite Romney getting more of the popular vote, since the Congressional...

Newt Gingrich had to win Mississippi and Alabama in order to remain a viable candidate. Those states weren't essential because of their delegate counts or their importance to the national election, but because Gingrich had won nothing outside the South and staked everything on a southern strategy. He lost. He remains in the campaign, but he's a ghost, a bitter aftertaste, and a thorn in Rick Santorum's side. Santorum now faces his own "must win" primary, Illinois. He's won more states than Gingrich, but his strength so far has been in the Midwest and South, and in neither region has...

A quick glance at the map might tempt you into thinking that the Republican nomination is roughly an even battle between Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum, with Mr. Romney tending to prevail in the Northeast and the West, and Mr. Santorum in the Midwest and the South. Do the math, however, and you’ll find that the nomination isn’t all that close. Mr. Romney hasn’t done that well in the South — but he also hasn’t been shut out there, winning Florida and its 50 winner-take-all delegates, and Virginia, where only Ron Paul was on the ballot alongside him. The Southern...

First, here's the set-your-hair-on-fire clip about which we're all supposed to be enraged, via Rick Santorum on the stump: "I don't care what the unemployment rate's going to be. It doesn't matter to me..." The horror! Rick Santorum doesn't care about the unemployment rate! Except, the former Senator's sentence went on: "...my campaign doesn't hinge on unemployment rates and growth rates. It's something more foundational that's going on." What Santorum was conveying -- albeit terribly ham-handedly -- is that his candidacy is about more than mere economic issues. He's arguing that while Mitt Romney's campaign relies on harnessing and exploiting...