One evening in Iowa last October, as autumn trudged toward winter, I watched Rick Santorum work a huge crowd of 7 civilians in the back room of a tavern, in a very small town. It was his final stop of the day, well past 9 p.m., but he answered every last question those people had [...]
Rick Santorum
As Mitt Romney stumped Sunday in Illinois, Santorum barnstormed three of Louisiana’s largest Baptist churches. The political calculation was clear. As he looks for his third straight victory in the Deep South, Santorum is making faith the centerpiece of his state campaign.
Rick Santorum’s campaign held an hour-long conference call with reporters on Tuesday with two purposes: 1) to say that it’s not fair that all anyone is talking about is Mitt Romney’s delegate lead, and 2) explain their memo claiming that Mitt Romney’s delegate lead isn’t as big as everyone else says it is.
That’s the line he used Monday morning in an interview with CBS News. Here’s what he can’t say, but really means: The already slim chances of Santorum securing the 1,144 delegates required to clinch the nomination are rapidly decreasing. Mitt Romney routed him in Puerto Rico over the weekend and two polls out Monday show [...]
When it comes to religion and morality, Rick Santorum is in a tricky position. He is clearly guided by his devout Catholic faith and most passionate about cultural values. And that explains a lot of his appeal among conservative voters. At the same time, Santorum knows that Mitt Romney makes a powerful case that Santorum’s [...]
With his narrow defeat in Ohio on Tuesday night, Santorum missed his chance to send Mitt Romney reeling, and to become the arguable front-runner for the Republican nomination. But Santorum didn’t fare poorly enough to slink off and call it a campaign. The former Pennsylvania Senator has made clear that he’s staying in the race, [...]
I spoke to Rick Santorum by phone for a few minutes on Monday afternoon as he rode across Ohio on the eve of tomorrow’s Super Tuesday extravaganza. The interview mostly covered ground for a piece you can read in the upcoming issue of TIME. But I did ask him about something in the news this [...]
Writing in the new issue of TIME, Jon Meacham challenges Santorum’s account of Kennedy’s views on Church and State: Santorum suggests that Kennedy offered a secular call to arms, banishing religion from American life in ways that believers like Santorum are still crusading to reverse. Kennedy’s address, however, doesn’t say what Santorum wishes it to [...]
In the early summer of 2006, then-Senator Rick Santorum was facing a tough reelection challenge, trailing Pennsylvania’s Treasurer Bob Casey by 9 points and struggling to shed his image as a Washington insider. So Santorum launched a statewide, 67-county push, raising twice as much money as Casey, hiring campaign-tested pollsters and ad-makers, and recasting himself [...]
One of the most damaging moments for Rick Santorum in Wednesday night’s debate came when Mitt Romney reminded Republicans that, in 2004, Santorum had endorsed Arlen Specter, then his fellow GOP Senator from Pennsylvania, in a high-profile primary fight against a more conservative challenger. Specter was fighting for his political life against Pat Toomey, and [...]
