Is Santorum’s Monday Announcement Key?

Former Pennsylvania Rick Santorum will announce he’s running for president when he makes a visit to Southwestern Pennsylvania Monday. His campaign is officially playing coy despite leaking the news to most major news outlets. The official press release announcing the event f at the Somerset County courthouse labels it “a major announcement regarding the 2012 campaign for President of the United States.”

Santorum makes the announcement after more than a year on the campaign trail. The Republican first visited the first-in-the-nation primary state of New Hampshire in April 2010. He’s made repeated trips to the Granite State, as well as Iowa and South Carolina. He even took part in a presidential debate last month.

So is the fact he’s now officially running for president news? Alex Roarty, who covers Santorum and other GOP presidential hopefuls for the National Journal said, not really. “But, you know, at the same time it is a marker when someone officially declares, even when we’ve been treating them like a presidential campaign for awhile. So it’s the sort of thing you cover, but it really doesn’t change anything.”

Political scientist Terry Madonna of Franklin and Marshall College agreed presidential announcements don’t carry the same weight they did just four years ago, when Democrats Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton kicked off their campaigns in the early winter months of 2007. “Look – none of these events, as symbolically important as they are to candidacies, make or break the success. This is a moment in time,” he said, adding the rollouts can do more harm than good. “A good event is marginally helpful. A bad event can kill a campaign. I think we saw that with Newt Gingrich’s entrance into the [race].” Gingrich spent the days after his official online announcement backtracking, after he ripped Republican Congressman Paul Ryan’s Medicare plan, backtracked from that criticism, got “glitter bombed,” and faced stories about a half million dollar tab at Tiffany’s, among other mishaps.

Madonna said Santorum’s choice of venue – a picturesque county courthouse in his home state – will draw more reporters to the event than an Iowa or New Hampshire announcement would. No matter how well he pulls off the announcement, Santorum will still face a long road to the nomination. He registered one percent among Republican presidential contenders in the latest Quinnipiac University poll.

Santorum, Gingrich Bash Obama at NRA

A long list of politicians went before the members of the National Rifle Association gathered in Pittsburgh Friday for the group’s annual convention and several of them used the opportunity to take shots at President Obama.

Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich set the tone when he ripped the President for not having a foreign policy that encouraged gun rights in other nations. He said the Obama Administration is the most consistently anti-second amendment administration the nation has ever seen. “In its efforts to help get anti-gun international treaties, in its effort to appoint anti-gun judges, in its effort to avoid prosecuting gun criminals while taking away the rights of innocent citizens,” said Gingrich.

Former US Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania followed on the list of speakers and followed the growing theme. Santorum bashed Obama for a recent statement the president made that he believed that America became great when it passed Medicare, Medicaid and unemployment laws. “Our President has to believe in who we are and then reflect those values to the world. Not see America as something broken, something that wasn’t good or great before our big government policies were introduced,” said Santorum.

Both Santorum and Gingrich are said to be considering runs for the presidency.

Santorum went on to strike out at those who he says have told him that there needs to be “a truce on moral issues” during the upcoming presidential campaign. “They don’t understand. America is a moral enterprise. Unless we are a good and virtuous people, we will not be a free people; we will not have limited government. What makes America special is that we trust you.”

Several other speakers touched on the theme of the US Government gaining its power from the people, rather than the people being granted powers by the sovereign.

Listen to the Newt Gingrich’s speech to the NRA convention. (26:00)

Listen to Rick Santorum’s speech to the NRA convention. (15:00)

Listen to US Senator Pat Toomey’s speech to the NRA convention. (5:48)

Listen to Congressman Jason Altmire’s speech to the NRA Convention. (6:47)

Santorum Will Decide On White House Run After November

Former Republican U.S. Senator Rick Santorum predicts Pat Toomey will have no problem beating Joe Sestak in this year’s Senate race.
Santorum is thinking about a presidential run, and has recently visited early primary states like New Hampshire, South Carolina and Iowa.
Santorum says President Obama’s agenda – especially health care reform – has the potential to “destroy freedom,” and that the recent health care law will “dumb down and flatten” the United States.
He says Democratic Senate nominee Joe Sestak is too close to White House policies to win in the fall.

"He’s not only for health care, he’s for more of what Obama wants to do. He’s not only for cap and trade he’s for a tougher cap and trade. He is what Pennsylvania has never elected – an unabashed, enthusiastic, wild-eyed Howard Dean."

Santorum is calling for a repeal of the health care law. He weighed in on other issues during a speech at the Pennsylvania Press Club, saying Mr. Obama is doing “worse than nothing” to stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons, and t
hat same-sex marriage would “devastate” children and go against “natural law.”

He says he’ll make up his mind on whether or not to run for the White House after this fall’s election.