The following is an excerpt from SAMUEL P. JACOBS | August 24, 2012 | thefiscaltimes.com |
Still carrying a permanent marker in his suit coat pocket, ready to autograph anything passed his way, Rick Santorum looked every bit the candidate for public office at a mid-August gathering of religious voters in the small Iowa city of Waukee. Days later, the former Republican presidential hopeful would be on the stump in Ohio. After that, it was on to South Carolina for a fundraiser benefiting the state Republican Party.
Santorum is not a candidate these days, four months after dropping out of a Republican presidential race in which he won 11 state contests and was a conservative thorn in the side of presumptive nominee Mitt Romney. Even so, the former Pennsylvania senator is experiencing the afterlife of a charmed candidacy, one that set him up for another run at the White House, and made him a coveted endorser for Romney.
Santorum has not said if he wants to run for president again. But after a primary season in which he questioned Romney’s conservative credentials and called him the last person Republicans should nominate to challenge Democratic President Barack Obama, Santorum is playing the Republican party soldier. Ahead of the November 6 election, he is trying to help Romney shore up support among the blue-collar and conservative voters who once flocked to Santorum’s campaign.
Occasionally, Santorum struggles to do that with a straight face, like when he broke into laughter this month when asked about Romney’s 2006 Massachusetts healthcare plan, which Santorum adamantly opposed and was a model for Obama’s healthcare overhaul.
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