Rick Santorum backing Marco Rubio for president

In this photo taken January 19, 2016, former Pennsylvania Sen.

Mr Santorum replied it was an achievement to be elected as the speaker of the house in Florida, and blamed President Obama for Republicans “getting nothing done”.

Santorum said Wednesday on Fox News Channel that he is “suspending our campaign as of this moment”.

“It is nearly hard to believe that the establishment of the Republican Party would stoop so low as to use Planned Parenthood-style fearmongering attacks to attack pro-life conservative candidates”, said Penny Nance, the president of Concerned Women for America, the nation’s largest women’s public policy organization.

Rand Paul, the libertarian-minded freshman senator who was once viewed as a formidable presidential contender, is suspending his White House bid. Once Susteren got to him, he told her, “We decided that we would be better advocates for somebody who shared [our] values and was in a better position in the race”.

Santorum, in an appearance on Fox News announcing his withdrawal and endorsement of Rubio, called the Florida senator “a tremendously gifted young man and … a born leader”.

That’s particularly true of Jeb Bush who burned through $15 million dollars in Iowa alone, and only managed to corral a meager 2.8% of the vote.

Like Santorum, who won in Iowa four years ago, the former Arkansas governor captivated evangelical Republicans but couldn’t build wide enough support to win the Republican nomination.

Santorum’s 2016 campaign failed to gather the steam it did in 2012.

In 2012, Santorum built up a ton of momentum as the Christian conservative candidate.

George Pataki, Rick Santorum, and Bobby Jindal appear on stage appear on stage at the first round of the CNN Republican Presidential Debate in Simi Valley, California on September 16, 2015.

John Brabender, Santorum’s longtime strategist and confidant, told the Guardian: “I think that Rick has some problems with Ted Cruz – he says too many things to get elected and sometimes questions his core convictions on immigration”. This includes the preparation of derivative works of, or the incorporation of such content intoother works. For the protection of AP and its licensors, content may not be copied, altered orredistributed in any form. Please see our terms of service for more information.