Rick Santorum

The candidate took his 3-year-old daughter, Bella, to Children's Hospital. She has a genetic condition that causes an array of mental and physical problems. A18.

Rick Santorum was the longest of long shots when, five years after losing his bid for reelection to the Senate by 18 points, he spent much of 2011 campaigning for president in three early-primary states. But he campaigned longer and harder - albeit with less media attention, money, and staff - than any other Republican candidate. By the time Santorum barely won Iowa (as we belatedly learned), he had held nearly 400 town-hall meetings. The rise of Santorum can be attributed to several key factors: Media coverage: Santorum's universally unforeseen sweep of the contests in Minnesota, Missouri, and Colorado last week won him enormous attention on broadcast and cable news across the country.

OUT IN Montana, where I live, folks are learning a lot about political corruption. Our senator is a guy named Conrad Burns. After his campaign pocketed more than $150,000 from indicted GOP lobbyist Jack Abramoff and his clients, Burns has become the target of a federal investigation into the matter. But as I tell everyone who seems shocked at Burns' behavior, he's just one of a number of senators who has based his career on manipulating the system of legalized bribery that has overtaken our democracy.

YOU KNOW what they always say - when things are going really good, they name a chicken salad after you. Indeed, these are the chicken-salad days for former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, whose rapid rise to here from obscurity in the Iowa caucus polls was celebrated yesterday when the popular Pizza Ranch outlet in Boone, Iowa, renamed an in-house creation its "Santorum Salad. " Just two weeks ago, there weren't many "naming opportunities" for a stalwart GOP culture warrior who was rejected by Keystone State voters in a landslide five years ago and then seemed mired in Iowa's single digits despite all but moving to the nation's first caucus state.

AS THE POLITICAL season gets hot and heavy, there are a slew of political ads airing on Pennsylvania TV stations, but none have been so harsh as the ones in the race between Bob Casey and Sen. Rick Santorum. Santorum started his ad campaign off kindly enough, with messages of his love for seniors, as he walked around them as they were polka dancing. Now they've become increasingly harsher, with Santorum running an ad that portrays some Casey financial donors spending time in the same jail cell.

OK, THIS SANTORUM thing's starting to look scary. Not for Democrats. They'd love to see Rick as the Republican nominee. The Democratic National Committee last week pushed a news-media conference call on why Mitt Romney's "wrong for Pennsylvania," clearly suggesting a preference to run against Rick. But GOP leaders must be antsy. Going into tomorrow's Illinois primary, Mitt holds a mere single-digit lead over Rick despite outspending him by a reported margin of 7 to 1. This means the man who coined "man-on-dog" remains an apparent alternative to the man known for dog on roof.

Responses to Rick Santorum's Thursday column, "The conservative jury is still out on backing McCain. " Todd Monahan Wayne Rick Santorum's view of how Sen. John McCain's positions pose serious questions for conservatives reinforces why Santorum is out of office and McCain is rapidly gaining national support. Many right-wing conservative views are out of the mainstream and won't win elections. Pillars of the Republican Party - fiscal conservatism, strong national defense, low taxes, less government - are sound policies that will garner widespread support.

AS A NATIVE of Pennsylvania who now lives abroad, I wholeheartedly agree with John Baer's explanation of Rick Santorum's landslide defeat in 2006: "Pennsylvania got to know him. " Baer's statement that Rick Santorum wants to outlaw gay marriage, though, actually downplays the former senator's extremism. If he had his druthers, Santorum would outlaw gay sex between consenting adults. In discussing Lawrence v. Texas, an ultimately successful challenge to an anti-sodomy law, Santorum said that a Supreme Court finding in favor of "the right to consensual sex within your home" would be equivalent to a right to bigamy, polygamy, incest and adultery.

Teresa Heinz is one of those rarities in American politics - the widow of a revered U.S. senator who was cut down tragically before his time; a woman of immense and liberating personal means; a semi-celebrity, who hasn't squandered her impact by over-exposure. So when she speaks as the voice of moderate Republicanism, as the guardian of the flame of her late husband, John Heinz, people listen. They listened closely a few years ago when she stood up for an embattled Sen. Arlen Specter, making a crucial television appeal that helped blunt a stiff Democratic challenge after he'd grilled Anita Hill.

MANCHESTER, N.H. - Texas Rep. Ron Paul and former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, battling for second place, tangled over the meaning of conservatism Saturday in the first debate of a weekend doubleheader ahead of the New Hampshire Republican primary. Mitt Romney, the former governor of neighboring Massachusetts with a commanding lead in state polls, mostly escaped serious attack during the two-hour debate as rivals scrapped with each other. Paul accused Santorum of being a "big spender, a big-government conservative" who used earmarks and voted five times to raise the federal debt ceiling, increase the federal role in education, and to expand Medicare to cover prescription drugs.

Rick Santorum finally endorsed Mitt Romney for president, but he sure didn't trumpet the fact. The word came near the end of the 13th paragraph of an e-mail that hit the inboxes of Santorum supporters about 11 p.m. Monday - more than 900 words into his 1,107-word message. The former Pennsylvania senator wrote of his "clear differences" with Romney, illuminated during their bitter fight in the primaries, but said he was reassured that the presumptive Republican nominee would stand up for conservative principles after a private meeting the two men held last week in Pittsburgh.

WASHINGTON - Mitt Romney will need independent voters in November, but he isn't abandoning his "severely conservative" record. The likely Republican presidential nominee has embarked on an aggressive campaign against President Obama that straddles two sometimes-conflicting political ideologies. On some days, the former Massachusetts governor is a social conservative and social moderate, a right-wing conspiracy theorist and promoter of political compromise. It's an evolving balancing act that, so far, is leaning decidedly right.

Here is the percentage of the vote each GOP candidate won Tuesday. Connecticut primary Candidate % of Vote Mitt Romney 67.3 Ron Paul 13.5 Newt Gingrich 10.3 Rick Santorum 6.9 90% of returns counted Delaware primary Candidate % of Vote Mitt Romney 56.5 Newt Gingrich 27.1 Ron Paul 10.6 Rick Santorum 5.9 100% of returns counted ...

Mitt Romney cruised to primary victories in Pennsylvania and four other Northeastern states Tuesday against a shrunken field of challengers, cementing his status as the presumed Republican nominee against President Obama in the fall. Romney sought to frame the contest as a referendum on whether Americans are better off now than they were four years ago, arguing that most are not, in a prime-time speech in New Hampshire. "It's still about the economy, and we're not stupid," Romney said.

Rick Santorum is playing it coy. He's looking for a little sweet talk, and at least a bouquet, before he makes a long-term commitment. Ten days after suspending his own campaign for president, Santorum has yet to endorse the all-but-certain Republican nominee, Mitt Romney. A seemingly perfect opportunity came and went at a party unity event Tuesday morning, when Romney visited a Pittsburgh suburb. But Santorum was not there. Indeed, the former U.S. senator from Pittsburgh told 4,000 supporters on a conference call just hours before the event that he would be fine if they wanted to vote for him in next Tuesday's Pennsylvania GOP primary, or in any upcoming contest, for that matter - notwithstanding his own announcement on April 10 that he was "suspending" his campaign.

WASHINGTON - Nothing fades faster than a primary campaign's losing slogans and all-the-rage moments. Remember Rick Perry's big "oops"? Rick Santorum's sweater vest? Before it's all lost, here's a look back at the lingo of the race for the Republican nomination: Trump for President - "The Donald" fired himself from the race early. He could have won, Trump declared, but business comes first. Oops - All Perry could say in a cringe-worthy debate moment when he couldn't come up with the third federal department he wanted to eliminate.

I can easily see Chris Christie as the 2016 Republican nominee. Here's how I get there: Rick Santorum. Marco Rubio. Paul Ryan. John Thune. Maybe Sarah Palin. They're the "usual suspects" for 2016 should Mitt Romney lose to President Obama, which current polls suggest will be the case. There's lots of time on the clock, and anything can happen, but assuming that's the way the current presidential race ends, the seeds are already being sown for yet another battle for the heart and soul of the Republican Party.

Social views foiled Santorum To the front-page headline "Did social views foil Santorum?" (Wednesday), my response is a resounding, "Duh!" Rick Santorum, by federal law, is entitled to his religious beliefs. His egregious error was attempting to foist those beliefs on all of us. That is seriously un-American — in spite of his exhortations' being innocuously characterized as "social views. " As the article noted, Santorum said he almost threw up when he read JFK's speech about the separation of church and state.