Santorum lays out his political future

Washington (CNN) - Two months after he suspended his presidential campaign, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum on Friday laid out his future plans as he looks for ways to make sure his voice is heard and his influence is felt as a leader of the conservative wing of the Republican Party.

Santorum announced he was forming Patriot Voices, a 501(c)(4) non-profit organization he said would promote some of his key issues, including a commitment to family.

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"One of the things that we found as we traveled around the country is that people came up to me a lot and said I was out there speaking about things that gave voice to their concerns and a lot of issues," Santorum said in an interview on Fox News. "People are concerned obviously about the economy, about national security. But I think a lot of people have a basic anxiety with where America is going, and I try to talk about those."
Santorum said issues like manufacturing and religious liberty were important to many Americans, but were being ignored by members of both parties.
"We wanted to put together an organization that reflected those voices across America," Santorum said, adding that Patriot Voices would help a number of candidates running for office, including presumptive GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney.
On Thursday, sources close to Santorum said he was setting up the organization to provide himself a vehicle to push issues important to him and a platform to stay engaged.
"He needs to set up those political foundations going forward, to take his message forward and to build the support base he will need in the future," said Brent Bozell, a conservative activist and chairman of the organization ForAmerica.
In addition to discussing his latest move in media appearances Friday, Santorum is scheduled to speak before what will likely be a very friendly audience of conservatives at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Chicago.
Santorum, whom activists call a standard-bearer for the conservative wing of the party, has been looking for ways to promote the causes and principles he pushed during the campaign, such as repealing the Obama administration's health care reform initiative, building the nation's manufacturing sector and trumpeting ways to strengthen the family.
As a staunch opponent of abortion and proponent of traditional marriage, he is widely perceived to be a major voice for those causes in the GOP.
"It was pretty obvious social conservatism had a champion in the presidential race, and that was Rick Santorum," Hogan Gidley, the Santorum campaign communications director, told CNN. "It is pretty clear there is an appetite" for that in the party, he added.
Several conservative leaders who have talked to Santorum told CNN that he wants to be active politically and to make sure he stays engaged.
In an e-mail to supporters last month, Santorum previewed his next chapter. "I am extremely excited that I will soon be sharing with you exactly how we can play a major role in defeating Obama, elect trusted conservatives all across the country, and hold candidates accountable to the promises they make to us at election time. And believe me, I am going to need you to play a critical role."
Santorum will also have available the resources of the Red, White and Blue Fund - the super PAC that backed his presidential bid. It has since turned into a leadership group that can help support Santorum's political travel, donate to political candidates he backs and give him a platform. It had just under $324,000 in the bank as of April 30.
He will have to use the donor lists gathered from his presidential bid to raise funds and finance his efforts. His campaign still had debt totaling more than $2 million at the end of April, and he has sent out e-mails to supporters urging them to help him erase it.
Santorum won a lot of praise from the conservative wing of the party for being the last major opponent against Romney in the primary.
"More than any other conservative who ran for president this year he has a following because he was the last person standing," long-time conservative leader Richard Viguerie, a friend of Santorum's, told CNN. "He has a big following now and can build that larger."
Before he pulled out, the Romney and Santorum campaigns and the candidates themselves exchanged harsh words. It's not clear, however, just how much the wounds have healed.
Santorum met with Romney a month after pulling out and endorsed him on May 7 in a late-night email, which some analysts described as tepid because the actual announcement fell in the 13th paragraph.
Santorum defended the way he announced the endorsement in an interview on NBC's "Tonight Show with Jay Leno."
"It was a rough-and-tumble campaign," he said on the show. "I can't say it would have been an easy thing the next day to turn around and say, 'Let's just go forward.' It was tough and so I wanted an opportunity to, sort of, think about it a little bit and (allow) family think about it."
Santorum has yet to appear with Romney on the campaign trail, though representatives for Santorum and Romney have held some discussions about Santorum hitting the road for the presumptive GOP nominee, one source with knowledge of the matter told CNN.
"I do think Santorum has a role to play on the campaign trail and that role is to bridge the differences between team Romney and social conservatives," said Ford O'Connell, who worked on the McCain-Palin campaign in 2008.
He stressed Santorum would boost the Republican ticket by campaigning in Iowa and in areas with a large concentration of blue collar workers, such as Ohio and Pennsylvania.
"It does behoove Santorum to go out on the campaign trail because he is trying to run in either 2016 or run for another office down the road," O'Connell said.
Santorum has recently waded into the political waters with some endorsements of conservatives running in recent Senate primaries: former Texas solicitor general Ted Cruz, Indiana treasurer Richard Mourdock and Nebraska attorney general Jon Bruning.
Later Friday, Santorum will appear at fundraisers for Cruz and the Texas Republican Party.
Tony Perkins, head of the Family Research Council, said one area where Santorum can have influence will be to help build support for House and Senate candidates because he connects with conservative supporters.
"He can use that and build upon that to help support conservative candidates," Perkins told CNN. "He has a very important role to play."
Besides mapping out his next political steps, he also has had to figure out how to support his family financially. He is expected to be a major draw on the speaking circuit.

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House Republicans Vote To Defund Obama Immigration Efforts

WASHINGTON -- The House voted on Thursday to kill nearly every action by the Obama administration to reform the immigration enforcement system, approving amendments that would separate U.S. citizens from their undocumented spouses and end prioritization of deporting dangerous unauthorized immigrants.
"The administration is now saying, 'I don't like the laws, I won't enforce them,'" Rep. Brian Bilbray (R-Calif.) said in support of an amendment proposed by Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa). "It would be equitable to an officer saying, 'I'm not going to enforce any drug laws, because I want to wait -- I may see a bank robber.'"
That amendment, and the 11 others offered and adopted by the GOP, stripped funding from government programs meant to make the immigration process, and treatment of immigrants, more humane and targeted toward the most dangerous. Many of the adopted measures transferred funding to border security, even though Customs and Border Protection would receive a $208 million increase in funding under Obama's proposed fiscal year 2013 budget.
Republicans have generally opposed every action by the Obama administration on immigration, even though deportations increased to record levels under his watch.
King's amendment -- one of the two that were introduced by the immigration hardliner and later approved -- would prohibit funding to implement the "Morton Memo," a document from Immigration and Customs Director John Morton in June 2011 that lays out priorities for deportation based on the fact that funding is too limited to deport all of the estimated 11 million undocumented people in the country. ICE took up a review in August 2011 under those guidelines to close deportation cases deemed low-priority -- an effort that so far has been less fruitful than expected.
Still, the administration and advocates argue that with limited funding, this type of prosecutorial discretion is necessary.
"You're going to go after the dangerous gang member before you're going to go after someone that is double parked or jaywalking," Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) said in opposition to the amendment. "That is what police do all over the United States."
Another adopted amendment, proposed by Rep. Sam Graves (R-Mo.), would ban the administration from granting waivers that would allow some undocumented family members of U.S. citizens -- spouses, parents and children -- to stay in the country while applying for legal status, which was proposed by Obama in January. Under current policy, those immediate family members must leave the country before they can return, without knowing when exactly they will be reunited with their U.S.-citizen families.
"This proposed rule ... makes it easier for illegals to stay in our country unlawfully," Graves said on the House floor. "But the core impact of the proposed rule would be to encourage relatives of U.S. citizens to come to the U.S. illegally."
Other adopted amendments included cutting funding for the ICE public advocate, a position created in February to work with stakeholders on their concerns about the system; blocking funding for a 2000 executive order that would aid non-English speakers; and banning so-called "sanctuary cities," which instruct police to avoid asking about immigration status because it is a federal duty.
Two Democratic amendments were adopted: Rep. Keith Ellison's (D-Minn.) amendment aimed at preventing racial profiling and a measure from Rep. Rush Holt (D-N.J.) to limit the use of unmanned drones.

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Polls Show Rick Santorum And Mitt Romney Tied: When Will Republicans Decide?

WASHINGTON -- Five new national polls released on Monday or Tuesday all confirm that former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum has gained significant support in the wake of his victories in last week's caucuses and primaries and now runs roughly even with former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney among Republicans nationwide.
The latest national surveys add up to a consistent snapshot of the Republican race. When asked who they prefer as a nominee, Republicans divide almost evenly between Santorum and Romney, with Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) running far behind.
Three of the new surveys, from CNN/ORC International, CBS News/New York Times, the and Pew Research Center, all show Santorum ahead of Romney by margins of 2 to 3 percentage points. The latest Gallup Daily tracking poll shows Romney leading by 2 points and a new Fairleigh Dickinson University survey shows both candidates running even.

Random sampling error accounts for much of the minor variation between the surveys. Since the nomination is decided by a series of statewide primaries and caucuses rather than a national primary, the critical finding is not the precise level of support for each candidate but that the Republican race has taken yet another dramatic turn.
As illustrated by the HuffPost Pollster chart below, based on all national polls on the Republican nomination, Santorum's support has nearly doubled in the last two weeks (to 31.4 percent) putting him into a near tie with Romney (31.1 percent) followed by Gingrich (14.5 percent) and Paul (12.1 percent).

The question everyone is asking is whether the current snapshot will persist or whether Santorum, like a series of conservative "not-Romney" alternatives before him, will soon fade. The polling volatility is likely to continue, since the latest results confirm that Republicans have not yet come to a consensus on their preferred nominee.
In recent Republican and Democratic contests, January proved to be the decisive month in which opinion shifted in a way that either crowned the presumptive nominee -- as with Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) in 2008 and Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) in 2004 -- or shifted to an alignment that remained mostly intact through the remaining primaries (as with President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in 2008).
Not this time. Instead, as explained in a Gallup analysis published on Monday, Republicans have responded to five of the first six primary or caucus nights by "jumping on the winner's bandwagon" and producing an immediate gain in the national polls. As shown in the table below, Romney, Gingrich and Santorum have all experienced increases in support on the Gallup Daily tracking ranging from 6 to 14 percentage points after victories.

The fact that many of these shifts quickly faded suggests that national polls on the Republican race will continue to show the volatility they have demonstrated all along. The conservative Republicans that have been shifting from candidate to candidate remain skeptical of Romney's conservative bonafides, and surveys continue to produce evidence of great voter uncertainty. On the new CBS/New York Times poll, for example, 60 percent of Republican primary voters nationwide say they could still change their minds about which candidate to support.
So at very least, the national polls are likely to shift again based on the outcome of the next set of primaries in Michigan and Arizona on Feb. 28.
No, January was not the month that national polling became more stable, as it did in nomination contests waged over the last decade. Instead, the better model for this year may be the Democratic contest of 1988. In that year, the eventual nominee, Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis (D), finished third in Iowa and then won in New Hampshire, but his victory got lost in coverage of the Republican race and the battle among the other Democratic candidates.
Polls in late 1987 and early 1988 showed no dominant front-runner, and support for Dukakis mostly varied between 10 to 15 percent of Democrats nationwide. His support increased after the New Hampshire primary to 25 percent on a CBS/New York Times survey, putting him roughly 10 percentage points higher than the other Democratic candidates.

But Dukakis failed to win a decisive victory in the Super Tuesday primaries on March 8, 1988. The results that day were something of a wash, with Dukakis, the Rev. Jesse Jackson and Tennessee Sen. Al Gore all winning multiple states. The field narrowed, but another CBS/New York Times poll conducted two weeks later gave Dukakis only a nine-point lead (34 to 25 percent) over Jackson.
It was not until the contest narrowed to just two candidates in April that national polling shifted decisively in Dukakis' favor. A final CBS/New York Times News survey in May found Dukakis with a 68 to 20 percent lead over Jackson.
Although the national polls currently show a close race, Romney's campaign is well organized and flush with cash and thus able to compete for delegates in every state. For now, Santorum's campaign must focus more narrowly on the upcoming primaries. Moreover, the majority of Republicans continue to believe that Romney will win. On the CNN/ORC International poll, for example, more than two thirds of Republicans (68 percent) now say they expect Romney to win the Republican nomination, up from 41 percent in December.
And if Romney does win? Two thirds of Republicans on the CNN poll say they would be either "enthusiastic" (21 percent) or "pleased" (44 percent), while only 11 percent say they would be "upset" -- 25 percent say they would be "displeased but not upset." Taken together, these results tell us that while the polling volatility may continue, most Republicans remain open to a Romney nomination.

CORRECTION: This article has been updated to remove references to a new Rasmussen Reports poll from Michigan inadvertently included among the new national surveys.

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