Santorum acknowledges end of campaign may be near
Rick Santorum, winner of the 2012 Iowa Republican caucuses, is trailing badly this time and admitted Sunday his campaign soon may end.
WEST DES MOINES, Iowa – Four years ago, Rick Santorum was darting around the state in an aide's Dodge Ram pickup, and something was happening out there: voters were moving his way in a wave unseen by polls.
Santorum, the former U.S. senator from Pennsylvania, won the Iowa Republican caucuses in 2012, and wound up the last challenger to Mitt Romney for the party's nomination.
Now, he is running 11th of 11 candidates with a week to go to the 2016 caucuses, and Santorum admitted Sunday for the first time in public that he soon may have to consider ending his campaign.
"You reach a point when you realize that you aren't going to accomplish what you're going to accomplish and you have to look out for the greater good," Santorum told USA Today after attending an early-morning service at the New Hope Assembly of God Church in the Des Moines suburbs.
"And," Santorum continued, "I've always believed in the greater good. I'm a person who believes in a cause and trying to make this country better, not about Rick Santorum and my own aggrandizement. I'll go through that process, whether it's after Iowa or whether it's after Super Tuesday or whenever it's happening. We'll go through that process and determine if we have a pathway to get there, and if we believe we do, trust me, no one will fight harder, no one will work longer. And if we don't, you have to work out what's in the best interest of our country."
Of course, Santorum still thinks he has a chance; after all, he said at a second appearance at a nondenominational evangelical church in Marshalltown, polling showed that 32 percent of the people who voted for him in the 2012 caucuses decided on the last day.
"Don't let the national media, don't let the establishment who's providing the money, decide who you should choose," Santorum said during a town-hall meeting after services. "Who cares what the numbers are in the poll? Your job is not to settle. Your job is to pick the right person and recommend to the rest of the country who the best person is who should be president. If you do that, I will sleep well – not because it would necessarily be me, though I highly recommend it should be me – but because you're doing your job."