Santorum Enters Race for President

Rick Santorum has never kept his opinions to himself. When the Republican announced his campaign for president this morning in Somerset County, he did it in his typical brash fashion.

President Obama, he said, has devalued America’s currency by spending money and running up the deficit.  The two-term senator said Obama also, “devalued our culture through our marriage, and not standing up for the Defense of Marriage Act. Through federal funding of abortions.”

Santorum acknowledged Obama won by wide margins in 2008. “But President Obama took that faith that the American public gave him,” he argued, “and wrecked our economy, and centralized power in Washington, DC, and robbed people of their freedom.”

Several hundred people turned out for Santorum’s announcement, which was made on the steps of the Somerset County Courthouse. They heard a fiery denouncement of Obama’s domestic policies, with the hardest-hitting vitriol saved for the Democrat’s health care overhaul, which Santorum said will make Americans dependent on the federal government. “Not those on the margins of life, not those who are old or sick,” he said. “But every single American now will be hooked to the government with an IV. And they will come to you every time they want more and say, you want that IV, you want that health care, then you’ve got to give us more power.”  He called the bill a Democratic power grab. “They don’t want to free you. They don’t want to give you opportunity. They don’t believe in you. They believe in themselves, the smart people. The planners. The folks in Washington, who can make decisions better than you can.”

Santorum has effectively been running – he called it “walking -- for president for more than a year, visiting states like Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina. His official announcement follows similar moves by former governors Mitt Romney and Tim Pawlenty, and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich. Santorum’s name recognition is low, compared to other GOP candidates. But with seven months to go before the Iowa caucuses, a Republican frontrunner has yet to emerge from the pack