Rick Santorum
The presidential candidate who won Iowa’s Caucuses in 2012 is back in Iowa today to encourage Christian conservatives in eastern Iowa to vote. Former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum said he’s “concerned” by how leaders in the Republican Party have steered the 2014 election.
“You’ve seen Republican leaders scolding the Tea Party, distancing themselves from social conservative issues — doing things which make absolutely no sense, but make even less sense in an off-year election where your base turnout is everything,” Santorum told Radio Iowa.
Santorum said in a year when President Obama is so unpopular, Republican candidates around the country should be farther ahead than they are and, according to Santorum, this divide he sees in his party is the reason why.
“You see a lot of Republicans who are just simply disaffected and are not going to come out because they feel like neither party is standing for them,” Santorum said.
Early this afternoon, Santorum joined a group of conservatives who’ve embarked on a bus tour of the state for an event in Dubuque. This evening Santorum will speak at “house parties” in Davenport and Dubuque that have been organized by the Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition. Santorum said his message to Christian conservatives in Iowa and throughout the country is that the Republican Party’s platform “still stands squarely” on the issues they care about.
“You know, I’m sorry we have (party) leaders who don’t understand that the Republican platform says what it says nor do they necessarily want to stand by it,” Santorum said. “But we do have a broad swath of the Republican Party and members of the House and Senate who do believe those things and they’re the ones that have to be empowered.”
A new Bloomberg Politics/Des Moines Register “Iowa Poll” testing the ground for the 2016 Republican presidential race has found Santorum is the first choice of just three percent of likely Republican Caucus goers. Santorum, who is “seriously” considering another bid for the White House, doesn’t find that “daunting.” Santorum said that’s probably three times better than where he started last time around.
“I don’t worry very much about polls,” Santorum said, “particularly given the fact that it’s not like I’ve been out there in the public eye a whole lot in the past two and a half years.”
Santorum spoke with Radio Iowa as he was driving through Maquoketa and he noted Jackson County was the 99th stop on his 99-county tour of Iowa back in 2011 when he was running for president.