With all the momentum of a sloth moving up a branch, Rick Santorum is announcing his formal bid for the presidency today. Coming off of losing his Senate seat in 2006 by a crushing 17 points and an ill-fated run for the White House in 2012, Santorum is back to squeeze out the last vestiges of support he has from the Tea Party. The former Pennsylvania senator has already been pushing his particular brand of social conservatism on the GOP 2016 field and the spotlight-seeking politician won’t be letting up anytime soon. While the poll numbers might exclude him from the “big-league” debates, Santorum’s knack for extreme stances proved enough to win him Iowa in 2012 and will keep the rest of the field watching their right this time around.
Take a look at Santorum in his own words:
On limiting legal immigration:
“Medium income in going down. Why? Part of the Reason is that we’re bring in floods of legal — not illegal — legal immigrants into the country.”
“We need to take the 1,050,000 people legal immigrants to this country – almost all of whom are unskilled – who are competing against the 74 percent of Americans who don’t have a college degree. We need to reduce that.”
“When people tell me the problem with immigration is just illegal immigration, they’re wrong. They’re wrong.”
On gay marriage in the states:
“People say that while they may support a Constitutional amendment, they don’t support getting involved in the states and doing something to make sure the states don’t pass – either through judicial fiat or through legislation – marriage different than one man and one woman. That is all the difference.”
On “religious freedom” laws:
“It does not legitimately allow for discrimination.”
Says opponents of the RFRA were issuing “fatwas against Indiana.”
On oil exports:
“We need to start exporting crude oil. It’s important to have an energy policy that creates jobs and stable energy prices not just for our economic, but for our national security.”
On ISIS:
“If they have a caliphate, they have a legitimate right within radical Islamic ideology to call people to jihad. Not just to come to Syria or come to Iraq, but to go to Texas or Oklahoma or other places to wage jihad.”
On Sharia Law:
“It is amazing that the left has not risen up and looked at Sharia Law, looked at Iran and looked how they treat minorities, looked how they treat homosexuals, looked how they treat a variety of different people over there under Sharia Law and condemned them and focused their energy on that.”
On separation of church and state:
“Once we throw God out of the equation, once our rights come from the government and from each other, we ultimately end up at the guillotine, wielding power, forcing people to do things against their will.”
Read the rest of Rick Santorum’s career highlights (lowlights) in our 2016 Scouting Report.
Published: May 27, 2015
