Reports: Rick Santorum ends long-shot GOP presidential bid
Rick Santorum is dropping out of the Republican presidential race after a poor performance in the Iowa caucuses, according to CNN and The Washington Post.
Santorum narrowly won the caucuses in 2012 but finished a distant 11th place with less than 1% of the vote on Monday after failing to retain the support of evangelicals who fueled his campaign four years earlier.
He told The Des Moines Register on caucus night that he'd be reassessing his bid. “We are going to spend a couple of days just thinking and praying, and figure out what we are going to do, and we will make a decision,” he said. On Tuesday night, he postponed a campaign tour in South Carolina that had been scheduled to start Wednesday.
While the former Pennsylvania senator emphasized social issues like abortion and gay marriage in his 2012 campaign, Santorum increasingly focused his 2016 effort on blue-collar economic concerns.
Like other GOP candidates, Santorum found himself swamped by the wave of support for Donald Trump. Meanwhile, much of his evangelical support from 2012 went this time to Texas Sen. Ted Cruz.
Santorum had counted on the kind of strong finish in Iowa he had during his previous campaign.
Citing his campaign in 2012, Santorum told CNBC in December: "I go back to four years ago. Six to seven weeks out, I was sitting at 3 or 4 percent in Iowa in a field that was half the size of this field, and we were able to come back and catch a late surge."
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