ONTD Political

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(CNN) – Rick Santorum is making preparations to formally declare his candidacy for president, a source close to the former senator from Pennsylvania told CNN.

Santorum will make a major announcement regarding his plans for the GOP presidential nomination the week of June 5 and the source added that Santorum is committed to participate in the first Republican presidential debate in New Hampshire. That event, which is co-hosted by CNN, WMUR-TV and the New Hampshire Union Leader, takes place June 13 at Saint Anselm College.

Santorum is arguably the most frequent flyer in the battle for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination. His trip to Iowa last weekend was his 15th to the state that kicks off the presidential primary and caucus calendar since 2009.

In the same period of time, he also made 16 trips to New Hampshire, which holds the first primary, and 14 to South Carolina, the first southern state to vote in the road to the White House.

Late last year Santorum started building up staff in these crucial early voting states. On May 3 he announced the formation of a presidential exploratory committee, filing papers with the Federal Election Commission. Two days later he participated in the first GOP presidential debate, in Greenville, South Carolina.

The former two-term senator lost his 2006 re-election bid by 18 points to Democrat Bob Casey Jr. and until last year was largely out of public view except for appearances on Fox News.

Polls over the past year indicate that Santorum registers in the low single digits nationally among Republican voters when it comes to the choice for their party's next presidential nominee. But, due in part to his strong opposition to abortion rights, Santorum remains popular with many socially conservative voters who have long had an influential role in the GOP primary process. Earlier this spring, Santorum made headlines by winning a much-watched straw poll at the Greenville County, South Carolina Republican convention.

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Oh God, I can't wait for this. Besides saying that John McCain doesn't understand torture, check out some of his other quotes. This man is such a joke. Some choice quotes of his:

"I have no problem with homosexuality. I have a problem with homosexual acts. As I would with acts of other, what I would consider to be, acts outside of traditional heterosexual relationships. And that includes a variety of different acts, not just homosexual. I have nothing, absolutely nothing against anyone who's homosexual. If that's their orientation, then I accept that. And I have no problem with someone who has other orientations. The question is, do you act upon those orientations?" -Rick Santorum, AP interview, April 7, 2003

"America is about an idea, and it has to be about shared value, or what is it? What is it? And that's why these moral issues, that everyone says oh, maybe we should step to the side and have a truce on, you can't. It is who we are. It is the purpose of our country. And I have been out fighting the wars on these moral issues."

"... we're looking at out of wedlock birthrates in three quarters to 75 percent of children being born out of wedlock.""

"Isn't that the ultimate homeland security, standing up and defending marriage?"

"The American Left hates Christendom.  They hate Western civilization.
The idea that the Crusades and the fight of Christendom against Islam is somehow an aggression on our part is absolutely anti-historical."

"Yeah, remember, under the Bush administration, welfare — I mean, excuse me, poverty among African Americans and among single unmarried women, poverty was at the lowest rate ever in the history of this country. So Obama’s policies are not working, Bush polices worked! For long a time as a matter of fact."