With former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum suspending his campaign for president today, we decided to look back at some of our fondest memories of the Santorum campaign and the great material he provided us at Right Wing Watch over the years.
Like candidates before him from Gary Bauer to Mike Huckabee, Rick Santorum was a candidate that not only directed his campaign to appeal to the Religious Right but was himself from the movement. But despite strong support from such voters in a divided field it was not enough for him to win.
One of Santorum’s greatest outbursts actually came well-before he entered the presidential race, while addressing students at Florida’s ultraconservative Ave Maria University he claimed that Satan is systematically attacking the U.S. by corrupting the culture, universities and mainline Protestants:
Santorum caused an international stir when he falsely maintained during a campaign event with Focus on the Family founder James Dobson that Dutch senior citizens live in fear of the country’s hospital system and that one in ten people in the Netherlands die as a result of euthanasia. He also spoke winsomely of a time when abortions were performed illegally “in the shadows.”
His opposition to abortion rights was a central part of his campaign, and he found it “almost remarkable for a black man” like President Obama to be pro-choice:
Towards the end of the campaign, Santorum decided to whip up excitement of his Religious Right base by appearing at a Louisiana megachurch, where the pastor, Dennis Terry, welcomed him with a sweltering speech telling non-Christians and liberals to “get out” of America, which Santorum applauded:
While we are sad to see Santorum go, at least Newt Gingrich is still staying in the race.
