He might be quitting the 2012 Republican race, but it is hard to say that former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum is leaving the competition as anything like a loser.
The grandson of an Italian immigrant coalminer entered the presidential race as a complete no-hoper, but he leaves it with a rejuvenated public image and an army of supporters on the social conservative right that will likely make him a power-player for years to come.
Santorum has lost to Mitt Romney but he has reinvented a political career that had once promised much in the Senate, but went catastrophically off the rails when he was crushed by a Democrat opponent in 2006 and cast out into the political wilderness.
In calling it quits now, Santorum avoids the risk of repeating that experience of being trounced on his home turf. But he can also pose as magnaminous and self-sacrificing, finally bowing out of a tough contest and allowing the party time to heal around Romney – while of course keeping a firm eye on 2016 should the former governor of Massachusetts lose to Barack Obama this November. Rick Santorum is too canny an operator – and too genuine a believer – to make the mistakes of Newt Gingrich and become a joke.
Indeed, Santorum has breathed fresh life into his career with the sort of gritty determination and endless work that he so often says he learned in the Pennsylvania coal country from where he comes. He grew up in Butler, a small, gritty, working-class town in the west of Pennsylvania. He was the son of a psychologist father and a mother – a nurse – who both worked at the local Veterans Administration. The Santorum household was a deeply Catholic one and family-centred. Santorum replicated that in his own personal life. He has seven children with his wife, Karen, whom he met when she was a law student.
But it was not a home life without tragedy. One of Santorum's children, Gabriel Michael, died in 1996 shortly after birth. Another, Isabella, was born with a serious disease, and her illness several times forced him from the campaign trail.
That must have been hard for someone who fought 2012 in such a dogged and determined manner, going from small town to small town, harnessing and tending a growing conservative flock. But that was Santorum's style: he has always been straight up about what he believes in. When he won his first election to Congress in 1990 – abandoning a legal career – he set to work as a member of the "Gang of Seven" group of young outspoken congressmen. He was just 32. When he then ran for the Senate in 1994 he won a seat at the age of 36, and once more posed as a youthful and relentless firebrand. He became a vibrant symbol of the power of the religious right, and in 2005 was named by Time magazine as one of the 25 most influential evangelists in America.
His social conservatism has always been unflinching. He doubts the theory of evolution, wants to ban gay marriage, has called the scientific evidence behind global warming "patently absurd" and opposes abortion even in cases of rape. That cost him in 2006 when his shock defeat saw him cast out of the Senate.
Some politicians might have taken that as a sign to moderate one's views. Romney almost certainly would have. But not Santorum. He still ploughed into the 2012 fight as a social conservative in an election meant to be about the economy. But, in a weak field and with the right wing tepid about Romney, his hard work paid off. He won Iowa, then he started picking up other states, emerging as the last serious opponent to Romney. But it was not enough.
Romney's machine outspent and outgunned him. Narrow losses in Michigan and Ohio saw the Santorum bubble slowly deflate. But it is likely not the end. Santorum has won a second act in American politics. It might be in the GOP, or it might be, like Mike Huckabee before him, in the realm of rightwing cable TV and punditry. Either way Santorum's voice is unlikely to fade away just yet.
"We are not done fighting," he said at a news conference announcing the suspension of his campaign. That is almost certainly true, and it brings to mind something his brother, Dan Santorum, once told a reporter about their childhood games of chess and baseball. "He's not a quitter," Dan said. Despite the events of today, that is still true for Rick Santorum.
