Add former Sen. Rick Santorum to the list of potential 2012 Republican presidential candidates. POLITICO has learned Santorum will visit first-in-the-nation Iowa this fall for a series of appearances before the sort of conservative activists who dominate the state G.O.P.’s key presidential caucuses.
The Pennsylvanian, who lost his 2006 reelection bid, will visit Iowa on October 1, appearing on a Des Moines radio talk show and speaking to a luncheon and workshop of Iowa’s Right to Life group before heading east to Dubuque, where he’ll headline a fundraiser for the conservative America’s Future Fund PAC and then speak about the future of the G.O.P. to a public audience in the Mississippi River city.
A former lobbyist for the World Wrestling Federation, Santorum is one of the dumbest and most sanctimonious senators of recent times. “Santorum?” former Senator Bob Kerrey once commented. “Is that Latin for asshole?”
So the G.O.P. field is almost surely going to include Sarah Palin and Mitt Romney, and we’ve got Newt Gingrich and Santorum considering running as well. Before he was discovered to be having an affair with an aide, Senator John Ensign had visited Iowa as well. The Grand Old Party, indeed.
