Rick Santorum, the conservative former U.S. senator from Pennsylvania, bowed out of the race for the GOP nomination Tuesday — but not from the fight to unseat President Obama. Click below to read the rest of the story.
“This Presidential race is over for me (but) we are not done fighting,†Santorum said in a poignant valedictory before reporters and backers in Gettysburg, Pa.
Santorum said he is suspending his campaign, a legal status that allows him to end active pursuit of the GOP nomination while continuing to raise funds to pay off campaign debts.
Santorum’s decision effectively clears the way for former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, whose nomination has been considered inevitable for weeks, to declare victory.
The announcement came after Santorum’s daughter, Bella, who suffers from a rare and often fatal genetic condition, was released from a hospital Monday night after being admitted for treatment.
Santorum said he and his family made the difficult decision during what was a wrenching weekend for them, given Bella’s hospitalization.
“Good Friday … was a bit of a passion play for us with our daughter,†he said, telling a crowd of supporters that Bella pulled through. “She is a fighter.â€
After suffering a crushing defeat in a Senate re-election bid in 2006, Santorum came out of nowhere to mount an insurgent campaign against Romney that saw him pull off a razor-thin win in Iowa and do well in southern states, but suffer key defeats in Ohio, Michigan and Illinois.
“Against all odds we won 11 states,†Santorum said. “Millions of voters. Millions of votes.
“Miracle after miracle,†he added. “This race was as improbable as any race you see for President … it was a love affair for me.â€
As his wife, Karen, blinked back tears, Santorum remembered some of the ordinary people, many with infirmities, who bucked up his spirits along the trail.
“We were winning … in a very different way: touching hearts, raising issues that other people didn’t want to have raised,” he said, defending his conservative stance on contraception and other social issues that endeared him to evangelicals and Tea Party voters.
He predicted that some White House officials will conclude “game over†now that Santorum is out of the race. But he vowed to keep fighting to send Obama home to Chicago, adding: “This game is a long, long, long ways from over.”
Santorum did not endorse Romney, but called the front-runner shortly before his announcement to inform him of his decision to stand down.
In a statement, Romney called Santorum “an able and worthy competitor, and I congratulate him on the campaign he ran. He has proven himself to be an important voice in our party and in the nation.
“We both recognize that what is most important is putting the failures of the last three years behind us and setting America back on the path to prosperity,†Romney added.
