...candidate for president and former U.S. Senator from Pennsylvania. He was a lawyer before becoming the Representative for suburban Pittsburgh in 1991. He lost his Senate seat in 2006 to Bob Casey, a Democrat machine politician and political dynast. Santorum is a social conservative whose primary attraction is seemingly that he is neither Mitt Romney or Newt Gingrich...
reignited his White House bid Tuesday, claiming an unexpected trio of state wins that raised new question marks over Republican frontrunner Mitt Romney.
...whose real first name is actually, no kidding, Willard, was governor of Massachussetts and is currently the front-runner for president on the Publican ticket. He is the son of the former governor of Michigan, George Romney, who himself ran for president after saving American Motors from failure, though not permanently. Romney's foot is in an ideological bucket because of Romneycare, a state-level experiment that should have been a warning against Obamacare if anyone had been paying attention. Romney's charisma is best defined as soporific, which is probably why he is leading the Publican field...
Santorum, written off only a few weeks ago, won caucuses in Minnesota and Colorado and a primary in Missouri -- a clean sweep that represented another stunning turnaround in this topsy-turvy Republican presidential race.
The established wisdom was that Santorum was surging in the Midwest and could take Minnesota and Missouri thanks to support from evangelical Christians, but no one expected him to win out west in the Rocky Mountains.
It was a bitter blow for Romney, who romped home in Colorado during his 2008 bid, scooping more than 60 percent of the vote.
"The Romney bandwagon just went in the ditch," CNN analyst David Gergen said, as pundits scratched their heads and struggled to explain the loss.
The Republican battle to be the nominee to take on President Barack Obama
I inhaled. That was the point...
is in a interesting repositioning phase ahead of "Super Tuesday" on March 6, when 10 states vote at once and almost a fifth of all delegates are decided.
A clutch of seven February contests, including the three held on Tuesday, will not alter the fact that Romney goes into that day the frontrunner, but they could boost Santorum's challenge and put added pressure on the favourite.
The surge by Santorum, a former US senator, arguably places him back out in front of former House speaker Newt Gingrich
...former Speaker of the House, author of the Contract with America. Gingrich gave the country welfare reform and a balanced budget and the Publicans a landslide House victory in 1994. On the downside, he has a roving eye and a loose fly, he's opinionated, and he's abrasive despite his ability to work with the other side of the political aisle...
, whose campaign has slumped in recent weeks, making a mockery of his claim to be the obvious "anti-Mitt."
With nearly all of the precincts reporting in Missouri, Santorum was the big winner with 55 percent of the vote, more than double Romney's 25 percent.
In Minnesota, Santorum won 45 percent of the vote, easily defeating Texas congressman Ron Paul at 27 percent. Romney was a distant third at 17 percent, with 85 percent of precincts reporting.
The biggest shock of the night was in Colorado, where Santorum won 40 percent of the vote, edging out Romney on 35 percent, according to official party results.
"Wow, what a night for Santorum and a disaster for Mitt," Charles Franklin, cofounder of pollster.com and a professor at Marquette University Law School, told AFP.
"This certainly raises the stakes for Super Tuesday and the burden on Romney to start winning like a frontrunner should. It's a great second chance for Santorum to replace Newt as the top alternative."
Romney and Gingrich will take solace in the fact that none of Tuesday's contests are binding votes but for Santorum it is all about momentum, media attention and maybe some more cash to fill up his depleted campaign coffers.