Washington--Rick Santorum, the dark-horse 2012 US presidential contender whose deeply conservative, often-gruff campaign put nominee Mitt Romney to the test, announced Wednesday he is launching a second run for the White House.
He made it official at an appearance near his childhood home in Cabot, Pennsylvania, where he told a crowd that "we must take back America," and pledged to be the candidate of working-class citizens.
"Working families don't need another president tied to big government or big money. And today is the day we are going to begin to fight back," Santorum said.
It will be a more difficult proposition for him this time around.
With 15 or more prominent Republican presidential contenders as his 2016 rivals, Santorum, 57, is even more the White House underdog than he was four years ago.
While he has years of new material from which to frame a counterpoint to likely Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, Santorum has slipped from national prominence, and his appearances draw smaller crowds than the previous cycle.
His opposition to gay marriage -- he said in April he would not attend a loved one's same-sex wedding -- remains unshakable, even though legal gay marriage has expanded to 37 states and the capital Washington.
He is staunchly anti-abortion, telling the crowd that "as president I will stand for the principle that every life matters: the poor, the disabled and the unborn."
Santorum has also blasted President Barack Obama's Middle East strategy for lack of leadership, saying the US military must take a dramatically tougher approach to the Islamic State group.
"If these folks want to bring back a seventh century version of Islam, then my recommendation is, let's load our bombers up and bomb them back to the seventh century," Santorum said in a May 9 speech.
The former two-term US senator stunned the political establishment four years ago, emerging from virtual obscurity to narrowly winning the Iowa caucuses, the first state-wide vote in the primary nomination process.
He turned his support for blue-collar Americans and conservative Christian values into a surprisingly strong challenge to frontrunner Romney.
AFP
