Santorum Post-Campaign: 'I'm the Only Conservative Who Tried to Do Anything'
Former GOP Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum, who suspended his campaign Tuesday afternoon, still made time to go to an event later in the evening at Lancaster Bible College in Pennsylvania, where he questioned why other conservative Republicans were not as open on social issues as he.
There were more than a thousand people in attendance, CNN reported, when Santorum sat down at the college campus to speak with James Dobson, founder of the conservative group Focus on the Family, who previously endorsed the former Pennsylvania senator for the White House.
Just hours after announcing that his campaign run was over, Santorum shared with Dobson that the decision was harder on his family, who were with him every step of the way.
Get Our Latest News for FREE
The discussion at the event soon turned to the social values Santorum brought to the race, including his support of traditional marriage and the sanctity of human life. Dobson praised him for talking about such issues openly, but was critical of those in the political spectrum who braded those views as "extremist."
"If you go down the list of sort of the life, marriage, social conservative issues, we were all pretty much in line, yet I was considered the extremist, which I found very interesting," Santorum noted, but added he was a different kind of social conservative because he was "the only one -- who actually tried to do anything."
The former candidate also talked more about his ill 3-year-old daughter, Bella, who suffers from a rare chromosomal disorder called Trisomy 18 and has been hospitalized a number of times while Santorum was out campaigning, although he took time off to be with her.
"She doesn't talk in a way that you would understand but she talks in a way that we understand. She's a happy healthy girl. Like everybody else, like every other kid she gets sick. The problem is when she gets sick it is life-threatening," Santorum explained.
The former senator refused to share his plans for the future, but Dobson's parting words to the politician were, "God's not done with you."
A number of Santorum's supporters who came to listen to the discussion remained positive that he can still be a big influence on the country.
"We're here to still be supportive of him and who knows, he may want to run again sometime," said Fred Wiegand, local television news station WPMT reported.
"I would love to see that, absolutely," added Linda Shupp from Denver, Pa., about the possibility of Santorum becoming Romney's running mate. "I think he's strong in what he believes, and that's what we need, somebody strong running for president or vice president."
