Former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum is the latest Republican to create an exploratory committee to gauge an official campaign for the GOP nomination to face pro-abortion President Barack Obama.
Yesterday, in order to be able to participate in Thursday night’s Republican presidential debate in South Carolina, Santorum created the committee to move a step closer to officially becoming a presidential candidate. He made the announcement on Sean Hannity’s radio show, saying he has filed the appropriate paperwork with the Federal Election Commission to establish the committee — putting him a step past the “testing the waters” organization he crated in April.
“I am pleased that we have taken this important next step in the process to potentially become a candidate for President of the United States,” Santorum said in a statement. “The debate this Thursday is a unique opportunity to put forth ideas and solutions to bring our economy back on track, and with Osama bin Laden’s death, I look forward to also discussing in depth ways to tackle our many national security challenges.”
Santorum said the committee makes it so he has met all criteria required to participate in the debate sponsored by Fox News and the South Carolina Republican Party scheduled for this Thursday. In addition to the debate on Thursday night, Senator Santorum will have several open press events while in South Carolina.
“Thousands of supporters have pledged their support to our efforts and we feel confident that the debate on Thursday will demonstrate our seriousness to make America America again,” the pro-life former congressman added.
Santorum is strongly pro-life and has conservative views on other political issues that would likely match up well with primary election voters in early states like Iowa, South Carolina and Florida, but he has not been able to move beyond the low single digits in the polls in those states.
The move puts Santorum in the same category as Republicans like former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who will not participate in the debate, pro-life former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, Ron Paul, pro-life businessman Herman Cain and former Louisiana Gov. Buddy Roemer, each of whom will join Santorum at Thursday’s GOP debate.
The former congressman and senator has strong pro-life views and, in February, condemned talk of a social issues “truce” including abortion.
In an interview with conservative radio talk show host Hugh Hewitt, Santorum slammed Mitch Daniels, also a potential GOP hopeful, on his abortion-social issues truce.
Daniels, the Indiana governor, renewed his talk of a truce in a new interview in which he said a “mute button” should be pressed on social issues like abortion so politicians could focus on fixing the economy. The truce talk has upset pro-life advocates and other potential candidates like Mike Huckabee and Tim Pawlenty have weighed in with criticism of Daniels’ comments.
“I think he is as far off base,” Santorum said of Daniels. “I don’t think he understands what conservatism is all about.”
“I don’t think he understands that Reagan’s three-legged stool is not just that we have three legs of the stool, the social conservative, the fiscal conservative and national security conservatives, but that the material made of all three parts of the stool is the same,” Santorum added. “And it’s a moral and cultural heritage of this country, is what that stool, the material itself that the stool is made of.”
Santorum continued: “And if we deny that, if we don’t understand that those issues are intertwined, and that without a strong and good and moral culture, we can’t have limited government, you can’t have lower taxes, you can’t, you don’t have the freedoms that we enjoy unless we have a moral code by which can all agree to live by. And for him to say that those issues need to be put in the background, I just, I’m stunned by it.”
Santorum told Hewitt he condemned the elite Republicans who don’t care about social issues but drive a lot of the money in the GOP presidential races.
“When you go to the big cities, where the big money is, the Republican donors say shut up about those issues, or we’re not going to help you. And I don’t know if you saw George Will’s piece today, but it’s pretty clear I’m not shutting up about those issues. I think they’re important issues. Obviously, the economic issues are front and center. But you have to talk about the economic issues even in the cultural and moral context,” the former Pennsylvania senator said. “There’s an element of the party, and unfortunately, I keep coming back, it comes back to where most of the money is in the Republican Party, are folks who live in the big cities, and are more socially liberal. And they just don’t want, they don’t want the campaign to be about something that they don’t want to be able to talk to their friends at the club about.”
