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For former Sen. Rick Santorum, it's always been about sureness.</p><p> Deep religious faith fuels Santorum's true-blue politics. It's what propelled him into becoming one of Congress' leading opponents of abortion, same-sex nuptials and wrongdoing by fellow lawmakers, regardless of party affiliation.</p><p> Dedication is the key ingredient that also powers Santorum's long-shot drive for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination. Though solidly in the bottom storey among the seven remaining major GOP candidates, the former Pennsylvania senator doggedly soldiers on through the old of Iowa and New Hampshire and the temperate early winter of South Carolina. He remains dauntless that his campaign will catch fire among conservative voters who may be leery of the current top-rank favorites - former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney.</p><p> "He impresses people because he's committed to running a offensive that spotlights his deep feelings on issues that he feels are important," said Tom Rath, a seasoned New Hampshire Republican activist and Romney strategist.</p><p> Santorum, 53, is a man waiting for his seriousness at the top of the GOP presidential heap - a position that's already rotated among Romney, Gingrich, Texas Gov. Rick Perry, Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota and businessman Herman Cain.</p><p> "Rick Santorum believes that he can win and believes that he can be the last mortal physically standing among the candidates," said G. Terry Madonna, a free affairs professor at Pennsylvania's Franklin & Marshall College. "What he aspires to be is not blown out in the old events ... and to be the alternative to Romney."</p><p> But Santorum's consideration has been elusive thus far; perhaps, some political analysts believe, because Santorum is so closely identified with sexual issues in an election season where jobs and the economy are the dominant concerns.</p><p> "Everyone has had a successively except Rick, and the million-dollar question everybody is asking - and he's quite asking - is why," said Tony Perkins, president of the Next of kin Research Council, a conservative social issues-oriented catalogue. "He's the one candidate that could stand the scrutiny. He could still have his moment."</p><p> The son of a psychologist father who was an Italian newcomer and a nurse mother, Richard John "Rick" Santorum was born May 10, 1958, in Winchester, Va., but grew up in Butler, Pa., a western Pennsylvania burgh he's described as blue-collar.</p><p> A devout Catholic and father of seven children, Santorum was elected to the Contain of Representatives in 1990 at age 32. He was a member of the so-called "Join forces against of Seven" House GOP freshmen who rankled House command in both parties by highlighting check-writing abuses by their fellow lawmakers at the now-pass House bank.</p><p> The House bank scandal - which ensnared several Democrats and a few Republicans - helped elevate the career of Gingrich, R-Ga., and helped Republicans take control of the House in 1994 for the first period in 40 years.</p><p> It also helped Santorum "mark aggressive his bones" in Congress, Madonna said. In 1994, Santorum defeated obligatory Democratic Sen. Harris Wofford, and he soon rose to become Senate Republican seminar chair, the No. 3 leadership position.</p><p> In the Senate, Santorum became known for his sexually transmitted conservatism. He led efforts to ban late-term abortions and led the unsuccessful GOP duel in 2005 to keep Terri Schiavo, a Florida woman who was diagnosed as being in a firm vegetative state, attached to life-preserving medical apparatus.</p><p> He derided a 2003 Supreme Court decision that declared a Texas sodomy law unconstitutional, saying, "If the Utmost Court says that you have the right to consensual sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the correct to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery."</p><p> Santorum's stances earned him a unalloyed following among religious conservatives and a spot on Time magazine's 25 most significant evangelists list in 2005.</p><p> It also earned him the enmity of many Democrats, women's groups, abortion rights advocates and gay rights supporters, who disliked what they considered Santorum's holier-than-thou bearing.</p><p> "Santorum, he's got a bit of a brash 'in your face' personality, which hasn't helped him politically at times," Madonna said. "Having said that, he's very modish and a very good campaigner. But that style does have the effect of turning off some voters."</p><p> Santorum unsalvageable his seat in 2006, suffering a crushing 18-point foil by current Democratic Sen. Bob Casey, the son of a popular Pennsylvania governor.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> It was one of many GOP defeats that year chalked up to the flagrant's anti-incumbent, anti-war mood. But Santorum also suffered from tangled questions in the state about exactly where he lived.</p><p> He listed his legitimate address as a home in Penn Hills, Pa., a Pittsburgh suburb, but he also had a larger rest-home in Leesburg, Va., a Washington suburb. Five of Santorum's older children were erudite in Virginia via a western Pennsylvania online charter school. Eighty percent of their teaching was paid by the Penn Hills School District. But school sector officials in 2004 charged that Santorum's family didn't congregate residency requirements and sought to get tens of thousands of dollars' value of tuition reimbursement payments back.</p><p> Santorum said he's now a Virginia staying.</p><p> "We've been voting in Virginia the last few elections," he told reporters in Harrisburg, Pa., in September. "I officially changed my voter registration, I about, a year or so ago."</p><p> </p><p> Santorum's 2006 beat was devastating, but not as much as some moments in his personal life. He and his wife, Karen Garver Santorum, had a son, Michael Gabriel, who was born in 1996 and lived for only two hours.</p><p> The couple slept with the dead infant in the hospital that night and took him home so the other siblings could deny him before he was buried, Santorum's wife recounted in her book "Letters to Gabriel."</p><p> And Santorum campaigns as his youngest daughter, 31/2-year-old Isabella, battles trisomy 18, an often-terminal genetic disorder.</p><p> Isabella's life expectancy isn't "expressly long, and just the idea of going off and doing something like this was something I extraordinarily struggled with," Santorum told The Washington Post last month.</p><p> He added: "I withstand like I wouldn't be a good dad if I wasn't out here fighting for a country that would see the excellence in her and every other child.
Source: Kansas City Star