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Rick Santorum: If I Win The Illinois Primary, I Win The Nomination By Andrew Rafferty EFFINGHAM, Ill. -- Rick Santorum on Saturday guaranteed that a win in the Illinois primary will result in his nomination as the Republican presidential nominee. "This is a primary, and turnout is everything. You do your job, you do your job, then this is the pledge," Santorum said. "If we're able to come out of Illinois with a huge or surprise win, I guarantee you, I guarantee you that we will win this nomination." Illinois has largely been predicted to favor Mitt Romney for Tuesday's...

Santorum Says He Would Enforce US Obscenity Laws That Obama Ignores By NBC's Andrew Rafferty ARLINGTON HEIGHTS, IL -- Rick Santorum accused President Barack Obama of not enforcing the country's obscenity laws and said Friday that as chief executive he would crack down on illegal pornography. Santorum found himself answering pornography questions during a stop at an Italian restaurant here after the discovery of a statement posted in his campaign website in which he asserts that "America is suffering a pandemic of harm from pornography." Recent reporting has shed light on the letter in which the former Pennsylvania senator vowed...

Chicago - The Republican race for president looks like a two-man contest in Illinois Thursday night. Mitt Romney is ahead of Rick Santorum among Illinois Republicans, even after Santorum’s big victories in Alabama and Mississippi on Tuesday. But Santorum is within striking distance for next Tuesday's primary. An exclusive FOX Chicago News poll found a six point lead for Romney among those likely to vote in the March 20 presidential primary. Romney had the support of 37 percent on Wednesday. Rick Santorum earned 31 percent of the vote.

(CNN) – Newt Gingrich is edging out his rivals for the Republican presidential nomination in Mississippi, according to a new poll. The American Research Group survey of likely Republican primary voters released Friday showed Gingrich with 35% support, followed by Mitt Romney with 31%, Rick Santorum with 20% and Ron Paul with 7%. Gingrich's margin over Romney increased slightly among those who said they will definitely vote in the March 13 primary, 37% to 30%. Santorum garnered 17% support and Paul received 5% among the same group. The poll was conducted after Super Tuesday, when each of the GOP White...

For one brief moment, Rick Santorum was the ideal Republican candidate for 2012, the perfect consonance of Don't-Tread-On-Me libertarianism and traditional cultural conservatism. When asked about contraception, which Santorum and the Catholic Church hold to be destructive of marriage and family, Santorum replied, "You know, here's the difference between me and the Left, and they don't get this. Just because I'm talking about it doesn't mean I want a government program to fix it. That's what they do. That's not what we do." This helped explain why so many liberal politicians and journalists were misunderstanding or lying about what Santorum...

Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum labeled Rush Limbaugh "absurd" over disparaging remarks from the radio talk show host directed at a law student who testified before a House panel in support of access to contraceptives. "He's being absurd, but that's you know, an entertainer can be absurd," Santorum told CNN's Wolf Blitzer on Friday. "He's in a very different business than I am."

UPDATED: COLUMBUS, Ohio — Even if Rick Santorum wins Ohio on Super Tuesday, he won’t be able to claim all of its delegates. In fact, he is at risk of forfeiting more than one-quarter of them. In three of the state’s 16 congressional districts, including two that are near Ohio’s border with Pennsylvania, Santorum will lose any delegates he might have won because his campaign failed to meet the state’s eligibility requirements months ago. Those three districts alone take 9 delegates out of a total of 66 off the table for Santorum. But it gets worse: Nine more Ohio delegates...

THE PROBLEM WITH SANTORUMFebruary 29, 2012 Even when I agree with Rick Santorum, listening to him argue the point almost makes me change my mind. I also wonder why he's running for president, rather than governor, when the issues closest to his heart are family-oriented matters about which the federal government can, and should, do very little. It's strange that Santorum doesn't seem to understand the crucial state-federal divide bequeathed to us by the framers of our Constitution, inasmuch as it is precisely that difference that underlies his own point that states could ban contraception. Of course they can. States...

A few hours ago I posted a piece titled Why Santorum is Toast and gave 10 reasons why I think he could be. Now I am going to take the other side of the argument and provide 10 reasons why one shouldn't write Rick Santorum off just yet: 1)In the two month history of the GOP primaries/caucuses and taking the main states into consideration only once has any of the candidates gone two in a row: a)Iowa (Santorum) NH (Romney) b)NH (Romney) SC (Gingrich) c)SC (Gingrich) Florida (Romney) d)Florida (Romney) Nevada (Romney) e)Nevada (Romney) Colorado (Santorum) f)Colorado (Santorum)Arizona(Romney) The trend...

Rick Santorum won Southwest Michigan's delegates during Tuesday's primary election. ...Mitt Romney may have won Michigan's primary, but he will not get all 30 of the ... in the 6th District, indicating the two delegates would go to Santorum.

LIVE DEBATE THREAD (Is it too early to start?)

In a potential Election 2012 matchup, the president leads Mitt Romney by a 46% to 42% margin. If Rick Santorum is the Republican nominee, the president leads 47% to 44%. Matchup results are updated daily at 9:30 a.m. Eastern (sign up for free daily e-mail update).

In trying to clarify recent comments from Rick Santorum about President Obama's "phony theology," the candidate's new national press secretary made a gaffe of her own, saying Obama had pursued "radical Islamic policies" . Alice Stewart, who had worked for Michele Bachmann's presidential campaign before signing on with Santorum earlier this month, made the slip during an appearance this afternoon on MSNBC's "Andrea Mitchell Reports." The segment focused on the former Pennsylvania senator's line of attack on Obama for his environmental policies, which were guided, he said in Ohio this weekend, by "some phony ideal. Some phony theology." "As he...

“We have to look at the root cause of why the economy is struggling as much as it is,” Santorum said. “Government intervention. Government regulation. Government taxation. Government is crushing and destroying the American spirit and the American free enterprise system.” Santorum said that government spending was impinging on personal freedoms and ultimately chipping away at what made the country great. “When the government gets as big as it’s gotten and starts to take over more of your life, then you get smaller as the individual, you get weaker, you lose control over your lives. You lose the rights that...

Excerpts from American Thinker by Edmund Wright: Couldn’t agree more To be sure, the only reason Santorum has gotten away with this is that no one has taken his candidacy seriously enough to bother to look. He has not been above the fray. He has been off to the side of the fray. Ironically, he has been the “look at me” candidate all along, so now perhaps it is indeed time to look at him. Be careful what you wish for, Senator. Oh My! Rick actually published a Pamphlet in his failed 2006 Campaign which tried to show Pennsylvanians how...