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Subscribe to RSSCHARLESTON, S.C. – As Rick Santorum’s supporters celebrated his strong Iowa showing, they were also making preparations for a push through South Carolina that will begin even before the New Hampshire primary vote.
Andrew Burton / Getty Images
U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum addresses a crowd in Iowa on Jan 3.
Santorum’s South Carolina fans, some of whom were gathered at his relatively well-appointed campaign headquarters to watch the caucus returns, will be able to see him in the Palmetto State on the afternoon of Sunday, Jan. 8th, when he stops in Greenville just two days before the New Hampshire vote.
His campaign also added another South Carolina staffer: political consultant Andrew Boucher, a former executive director of the New Hampshire Republican primary – a ramping-up of staff that suggests Santorum will seek to capitalize on his Iowa momentum here, a state that has picked every Republican presidential candidate since 1980.
Recommended: 11 things you might not now about Santorum
Santorum’s supporters, about 15 of whom remained at the headquarters as the final votes trickled in, were ecstatic about his neck-and-neck finish with Mitt Romney – but some of them said they weren’t surprised he did so well.
“I knew this was going to happen,” Kathy Hughes, a retired teacher from Mt. Pleasant, said. “So many people were saying, ‘why are you supporting him? Santorum can’t win!’ But I knew.”
She added that the phones at Santorum’s headquarters here had been ringing non-stop over the past few days. The phone did buzz a few times into the wee hours of Wednesday morning; the last call, Hughes said, came from a voter in Peoria, Illinois who was trying to get in touch with one of Santorum’s early-state headquarters.
Joan Peters, a member of the Charleston Tea Party board from Moncks Corner, said she supported Santorum’s decision not to skip New Hampshire and come directly to South Carolina as Michele Bachmann is doing and Rick Perry was going to do before he announced he’d first return to Austin to reassess his campaign.
“He’s probably not going to win because Mitt Romney’s got New Hampshire pretty sewn up, but he’ll do well and then he’ll come down to South Carolina and the money’s going to start coming in,” Peters said. “People now realize what we’ve always realized, which is that he’s a credible candidate and he can win.”
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fesity great turn out hope you dont choke on your popcorn
LOL!
you guys crack me up, Feisty has been on here forever, made countless comments about the BS of the teabaggers and the GOP. She predicted a low turnout and it is the first thing you can actually say she was wrong about.
woo hoo, break out the bubbly!!
The mainstream media has turned the Presidential election into a three ring circus. It is sad to see what our Country has become. It is no better than a reality TV show or worse.
Santorum is too lefty liberal for South Carolina (a northerner). They like conservatives from Texas who cannot speak in complete or coherent sentences. You know the kind who wants to get rid of Govt agencies but cannot remember which ones. The kind who dislikes SCOTUS liberals but cannot remember their names. They love to be ambiguous about what they hate down south!
makes you wonder about santorum. if a person had a last name of hitler they certainly would change it to maybe heidler etc. a last name of anus could be changed to janus or manus etc. all santorum had to do is change it to santorium. this guy is strange indeed. a real featherweight. he has frothy thinking.
There is nothing particularly wrong with his name. Because the the gays invented some urban slang to show their hatred means nothing; they could have done that to anyone. Odd comment from someone who calls himself "Mr Potato Head".
Conservatives/Independents/Republicans/Tea Party/Libertarians are focused on beating Obama.
Obama's ideology is disturbing to many, many intelligent Americans.
Obama's "redistribute hard-working Americans' Wealth" is very disturbing.
Obama Wants our freemarket system to fail. He wants to replace our freemarket system with a socialist institutional system that a few people in Government will run.
Thanks, but No Thanks, Obama!
Rational, Responsible Americans Are Very disturbed by Obama's ideology., and Should be disturbed by Obama.
LOL. I find this Obamaphobia endlessly amusing. In fact, President Obama has changed very little in this country. Too little, by many's reckoning. Virtually everything he is criticized for was either done by previous Presidents or is simply made up. "Intelligent Americans" know this, which is why he stills has a good chance of being re-elected.
paul --- apparently you see no problem with an oligarchy.
paul --- did you know obama and putin are half brothers???????????????????
Oh lord, don't get them started...that could end up on Fox news as a liberal admission. :)
Who told you that, Paul? Let me guess... Rush Limbaugh? Glenn Beck? Bill O'Reilly?
Your type is easy to spot. That kool aid you've been drinking has turned your tongue purple.
culheath --- i was being facetious, but i get your drift. they concoct any lie or half-truth into a talking point. lies are their way of life. their god is the fat man flush limbaugh who pulls talking points out of his rump everyday and presents it as the truth. he is about the most vile piece of trash the teabaggers have going for them.
yeah, I knew you being facetious...but they'll run with anything, as you said.
Why doesn't anyone ask Santorum how inducing a delivery at 20 weeks is not an abortion. You can bet your ass if Michelle Obama wrote in a memoir how for the sake of her health she was given pitosin to induce delivery at 20 weeks it would be called an abortion. This is exactly what the Santorums did and then took the tiny corpse home to introduce to his/her siblings and spend the night in the Santorums bed. He calls himself a devout Catholic, I call him a nut. His beliefs are so far from Catholic social teaching as to be unrecognizable. At 20 weeks the baby is 100% non viable when they induced delivery it had a 100% chance of death within hours usually by suffocation due to underdeveloped lungs but possibly by massive organ failure. He made the decision reportedly by his wife without her concurrence. Please explain in what universe this is not an abortion and a rather painful one.
jkh
The fetus was determined to have a serious defect early on and the Santorums knew it would die within hours of birth. Reportedly, they decided to induce labor when Karen Santorum developed a life-threatening uterine infection.
I believe Catholic orthodoxy would have required Mrs. Santorum to sacrifice her own life for the sake of the fetus, yet they decided on another course of action which went against their Catholic principles.
kaybe,
Eventual viability was in question as was the mothers health I would have done the same without question. The question I have is how someone who wants laws past outlawing all abortions even in cases of rape, incest and danger to the woman can have it done for themselves and call it an unfortunate birth and death. The Catholic Churchs current stand is that all abortion is a mortal sin condemning a non absolved sinner to eternal damnation. This has not always been the cases with Thomas Aquinas and St Augustine having differing opinions as to when a soul enters the equation and the level of sin incurred. If this fool took his religion seriously he would study Catholic Social Teaching from Rerum Novarum through Caritas en veritae. The most Conservative of these are extremely liberal and acknowledge governments responsibility to the poor, our stewardship of the earth and the establishment of an equitable society. Santorum advocates abandoning every one of them.
jkh
Apparently they didn't even induce. There was no way to stop labor and it would have been medically irresponsible anyway.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1014&pid=15931
I have never heard Santorum he was opposed to abortion necessary to save the life of the mother.
Santorum is #2. And lube.
Obama has an agenda, and that agenda is to get rid of our Freemarket System. How many times do we have to hear Obama say "our freemarket system has failed", before we realize what Obama's true agenda is?
Obama does not like this country, Period.
Our freemarket system is not perfect, but it beats the hell out of a "socialist institution" that will be run by a few dictators who will pick "winners and losers".
Thanks, but No Thanks, Obama!
paul --- wrong paul! the oligarchy at the top picks our winners and losers. most of them are good republicans.
Paul, was that on page 11 or 12 of your handbook? Sorry, I can't read mine, Used it for the bottom of the bird cage and it's too soiled to make out.
Paul,
You are misquoting and simultaneously taking part of a sentence out of context, nice work dual misdirection. If you hurry you might be able to call hannity and ask for work. Please tell me at what period of US history we operated a pure market economy without government intervention I am unaware of any period as long as 10 years.
jkh
Really? Rick Santorum? I am from his home state...look at his background and his stand on key issues as well as his take on women working (we don't need to) on family...there is a reason he is no longer representing PA. I can't believe a man with the views he supports is doing this well. Look at what he did here in PA then decide if he is really a viable candidate for 2012!! I would not vote for him if he was the last man on earth--and it has nothing to do with party affiliation either...i vote for the person best qualified for the job.
Mycatydid,
I also live in Pa and have actively campaigned against him. He is an obnoxious irritating self righteous twit. He was responsible for little to no meaningful legislation but was a top drawer earmarker for the western part of the state. If you live east of Harrisburg he did less than nothing. He lived in Va. his entire 2 terms while renting out his Pa home and collecting money for his kids education in Va from the state of Pa. There is possibly not a bigger jackass in American politics.
jkh
Santorum is nothing but the newest 'flavor of the month'.
And what a nasty flavor it is.
People will get tired of having Santorum flowing all over them from various right wing pundits. Eventually, they will get tired of having Santorum all over, and will rather rapidly decide that they want little to do with that nasty Santorum.
He's an extremist's extremist when it comes to sexuality (gay or otherwise). He's a religious extremist as well. In every other aspect, he's a standard Washington DC insider, doing AND DEFENDING everything that the common American says is wrong with Congress. This makes him very unelectable with the common American (of which there are far, far more of than the right wing evangelical Christians who want to turn America into a right wing Evangelical state).
The media will continue to hype these primaries as if they're a big news story. But the race is really over. Romney should run the table from here on out. If those Evangelical hard cores in Iowa voted for him, even barely, figure the rest of the states's GOP voters will too anyway from slim margins to landslides.
William, I completely agree with you.
And what does it tell us? It tells us that only those on the far-left are still enthused by what Obama has to offer. Americans, be they republican, libertarian, tea-party or moderates are fed up with where Obama has led this country.
The fact that "Evangelical hard cores in Iowa" (as you called them) are willing to vote for Romney indicates that these disparate groups are in fact united in one cause, that being the defeat of Obama.
The clock is ticking and time is about to run out for this one-term-wonder of a president! (Thank God!)
btw...
(show me the clown nose, fisty!)
It tells us nothing of the kind, SOTB. Obama won Iowa in 2008. The Iowa caucus was held only to choose a Republican candidate to oppose him, and the most moderate choice, Romney, was the winner. That indicates that even the right wing Iowa evangelicals are closer to the center--and to Obama-- than they are to the ultra-conservative faction of the GOP.
Don't break out the Tea just yet.
I'm delighted that Rick "frothy mixture" Santorum did as well as he did. Couldn't happen to a nicer guy, or a more bigoted party.
My God....Are we really going to have to choose between Obama or Romney!!!! God help us all!!! They both suck so bad it's not even funny!!! Just shows you that politics is evil incarnate....and as a result they only want poor leaders that can be controlled by the puppet masters (that includes Dems and Repubs because they are all the same ...no difference...one has its supporters and the other have there supporters and they throw a few bones to their base while behind the scenes they wheel and deal to make themselves, their freinds and their party officials rich. Notice that the US and it's people were not mentioned in who benefits becuase we do not benefit from the political process.....it is ethically and morally corrupt!!!! It's gonna taker another revolution to turn this country around!!!
You always have Trump the independents choice.
Boggles the mind that to this day religion is still used and abused to gain footing in politics. The kind, loving, forgiving souls associated with religion need to take a really hefty dose of reality, open their eyes and minds, and see what's going on in the world. Not just what's going on in the village they live in.
Be realistic. Santorum couldn't get reelected in Pennsylvania.
My God....Are we really going to have to choose between Obama or Romney!!!! God help us all!!! They both suck so bad it's not even funny!!! Just shows you that politics is evil incarnate....and as a result they only want poor leaders that can be controlled by the puppet masters
Thank you, Mikcan. Nothing could be closer to the truth!
@Mikcan racist i red your comment about little girl
the real n word was there but i didn't want to put it in. Your a scumbag and ill follow you closely until you close your account
Just who in their right mind wants to have another warmongering maniac in the White House? This Rick Santorum says he wants to bomb Iran and kill a lot of innocent people over there and he's purportedly a Roman Catholic too! Just what part of the 6th Commandment does he not understand? The people of Iowa only proved their own ignorance last night but their just as many ignoramuses in other states willing to vote for him, unfortunately!
Speaking of ignorance and ignoramuses...
I believe you meant ...last night but there're (more properly there are) just as many...
You really should take a short class in the English language... this would be covered in the first session. ;-)
After strong Iowa showing, Santorum camp looks ahead to SC
ABSOLUTELY!
1. Herman Cain is unlikely to end the "suspension" of his campaign.
2. Bach backed.
3. Perry doesn't want to do any NH debates--enough incoherence already.
4. Ging will do NH, but just to jab Romney. He can't survive in SC--it's headline news they'd be wasting their vote.
5. Ron Paul is too extreme, will do poorly in NH after 3rd in IA. Somewhere between ethereal and unreal.
6. SC: It's Saint-torum vs. Rombo--give The Saint the edge. Rick--consistent red meat and, after the niceties, it is the Confederacy.
Conclusion: The question to the GOP is complex and now has morphed to: not just could Rick win, but who do we want? Money will be no object if Rick is nominated.
Too bad for Rick, though: Romney has Christie as VP. That's a powerful surrogate to continue the muscle while Romney hums hymns. But it's a tough call--Romney can't "select" him early, or Romney will look like he's running on Christie's Coattails. BUT: he'll be asked again and again, and in short order come right up to the line. "It's too early." " He's certainly one." He's one of a handful." "He's one of the select few." "I have compiled a short list". "I have compiled a miniscule list, and he's on it. Actually, he takes up the first, and second, pages."
I wonder if the wingnut Protestants in the GOP realize that Santorum thinks it's OK if the states ban contraception?
It seems Santorum disagrees not just with landmark supreme court cases like Lawrence v Texas, but also Griswold v Connecticut. I seriously wonder if the Christofascists in Iowa who voted for Santorum would really want to live in his theocracy.
Gee, I always payed for my OWN contraception or expected the guy to pay for his condoms. I'm very far from rich. What's with people who expect the government to provide absolutely everything for them? Are we all THAT incompetent?
Santorum also said that he himself would NOT ban contraception. Seriously, how many states would move to ban it in 2013 even if they could? Fact: when they sought a test case for that Connecticut case back in 1965 it was very difficult, because the law hadn't actually been enforced for years even then.
I don't think you comprehend the consequences of Griswold v Connecticut, a precedent which Santorum opposes.
Most people would never ever vote for that nutball if they understood his positions.
Most people including me have more important issues, like finding a job.
Santorum for the nomination please.
You'd be doing Obama a favor.
@ NewtISaPIG
Good luck with that! Have fun at camp fema!
Keep running Rick, you were an embarrassment as a Senator for us in PA and you're only FURTHER proving what an embarrassment you are with every word you speak! Run baby, RUN! We need the comedy!
Can you go after the EPA and say that they should geometrically increase the levels of mercury and arsenic that can be found in our water and air so that antiquated power plants can continue to make the rich richer? PLEASE? We love to see who you truly work for, I mean you don't wear the emblems of your sponsors the way that other professionals do. C'mon, do it! We need the laughs.
There are few things more priceless than when you're presented with facts that refute the complete dross that comes out of your mouth as how you'd "fix" things! NH debate is coming, make that dumbfounded look for me one more time to hold me over until Saturday when you throw that moon face NON STOP!
Say again how bombing Iran is a good thing! We all love when chicken hawks talk tough and send our children to die. Luckily your wife has squirted out a few that survived, we can hope you'll send your children to die in Iran. Right?
Rick, run baby, RUN! We need the laughs!
derek --- right on. the repugnants are all o.k. with sending the poor black kids and latinos to do the dirty fighting for them in wars. as soon as they arrive home they try to deny them all the rights of an american citizen. so gracious of them isn't it, as long as their precious offspring don't have to serve.
Santorum, run out of Pennsylvania, should do well in a state of bible thumpers and crackheads. Viva Santorum in South Carolina. However, those in PA that know him best must be smiling at the resurrection.
Ben=The Grinch's gay little brother
Tired Bickering Hypocrit= repiglicon troll meat
LoL...Just googled the word "Santorum"