Rick Santorum to Run for President Again in 2016; Says He's the 'Underdog' and 'America Loves Underdogs'
Adding to the growing number of hats already floating in the sea of potential Republican presidential candidates for 2016, former Pennsylvania senator and runner-up in the 2012 GOP presidential primary Rick Santorum has announced that he's jumping into the race for the White House again and this time he sounds prepared for a dogfight.
Santorum, who won caucuses and primaries in 11 states in 2012 is not currently among the names being bandied about as a potential contender despite the party's history of nominating the next guy in line from the last contest.
In a recent interview with The Washington Post, however, he doesn't seem concerned with the oversight.
"America loves an underdog. We're definitely the underdog in this race," he said while noting that the underestimation "has given me a lot of latitude."
Santorum, who joined the movie industry as the new CEO of faith-based EchoLight Studios in 2013, says he expects his bid this time around to be much different from the last one when he had to build political operation from scratch.
Santorum's grassroots operation Patriot Voices, which he founded with his wife Karen Santorum in 2012, currently has 150,000 grassroots activists across the country. And according to the group: "Our mission is clear: we must fight to protect faith, freedom, family and opportunity; and the fight for these bedrock principles is just as important today as it was when our country was first founded."
Among some of the efforts being promoted by Patriot Voices is a campaign against President Barack Obama's executive order on immigration as well as a campaign to buy American made products this Christmas.
Santorum says with his new message and strategy he is hoping to transcend his socially conservative base and connect with blue-collar voters who are being left behind in the economy.
"We're just obviously in a better place right now. Our message will be a lot more focused this time than it was last time," he said.
"I don't think I've met a 'suit' yet," he noted of his listening tour across America. "It's very much heart of America, average Americans who have found a place where they see someone who will stand up and fight for them. If the Republican Party has a future — and I sometimes question if it does — it's in middle America. It's not in corporate America."
He expects to make a series of trips to the early-contest states of Iowa, South Carolina and New Hampshire. A book which he wrote with his wife Karen about their daughter Bella's struggle with a deadly genetic condition called Trisomy 18 is expected to be released in February.