Former Senator Rick Santorum announced Monday morning on Good Morning America that he was entering the race for president, and said he was “in it to win.” The appearance comes just before his official kick off speech in Pennsylvania.
Santorum, who was resoundingly voted out of office in 2006 and remains at the bottom of most presidential candidate polls of Republican primary voters, said that he absolutely has a chance at the nomination.
“What people are looking for is someone who has stood by their principles in good times and bad,” he said, noting that 2006 was a “pretty bad time for a conservative,” but that he didn’t moderate what he stood for to appease the political tide.
Santorum said he made several “unpopular decisions,” including continuing to demand for the reform of Social Security, something, he noted, “not even Paul Ryan had the temerity” to deal with that issue in his controversial budget. He said he would actually go even farther than Ryan to reform entitlement programs, altering Medicare for those 55 and older.
The former Pennsylvania Senator called Obama a “paper tiger” in dealing with the Iranians, saying that despite the fact that Iran’s nuclear program constituted an “existential threat to the Israelis,” Obama had done nothing but “[appease]” Iran, leaving them to “[move] full scale forward with their nuclear program.” He also attacked Obama for not dealing harshly enough with Syria.