Gettysburg, Pennsylvania

RICK SANTORUM (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Thank you very much. It's always an honor to be here in this beautiful town of Gettysburg. Such an historic town.

First and foremost, I just want to thank everybody for the outpouring of prayers over the past weekend. We had a -- a -- a difficult weekend. We -- Good Friday was a little bit of a passion for us, with -- a passion play for us with our daughter Bella who is (inaudible) getting, unfortunately, very sick. We ended up in the hospital all weekend.

But I'm here to -- just to report, to start out things, that she is a fighter and she is doing exceptionally well and is back with us and the family. And we are looking forward to spending a lot of great time with her.

But it did cause us to think and as the role that we have as parents in her life and with the rest of our family, and this was a time for prayer and thought over this past weekend, just like it was, frankly, when we decided to get into this race.

SANTORUM: Karen and I and the kids sat at the kitchen table and talked about our hopes and fears and our concerns. And we were very concerned about our role as being the best parents we possibly could to our children and making sure that they had a country that was -- well, where the American dream was still possible.

And I think a lot of -- a lot of concerns that we had, that Karen and I had, in particular, for our family, was that, with what was going on in Washington, D.C., and all of the -- the problems that you've heard me talk about on the campaign trail, that that American dream was slipping not just from the hands of average Americans but for all Americans that that dream was slipping away, and that we had to, as good parents, to go out and do what we could to take on that responsibility for our children and for children across this country.

And so we started out almost a year ago now in Somerset, Pennsylvania. And I told, well, my story, our story, of our family and my grandfather, who came to this country and worked in the coal mines and my father who served our country in World War II, and throughout the course of this campaign, talked about my stories and the stories of our families.

But after a while it became less about my stories and more about -- what kept us going were your stories, the stories of people across America that we had the privilege of getting a chance to know and to -- to interact with.

You know, when you -- when you travel around -- and one such story was a guy named Chuck who had a pickup truck and -- and joined our team and drove us around in his Dodge Ram pickup truck for months on end and did so as a volunteer to -- because he believed. He believed that we provided the best opportunity to turn this country around.

And I met a lot of folks in Iowa that I'll never forget, folks like Sam Clovis, who is a talk show host.

And I'll never forget this fighter pilot, a man of very strong convictions, welling up and tearing up about what was going on with our country and particularly with our national security and laying out not a thee-legged stool of Ronald Reagan but a four-legged stool, with the Constitution being one of those vitally important legs that we had forgotten about; people like Wendy Jensen, who was our best volunteer, 5,000 phone calls.

And just a few days before the primary, she, because she was someone who was dealing with a disability, dealing with an illness, she passed away shortly before the -- the caucus, but was a -- was someone that I remembered her passion for the least of us, those who are on the margins of society, as many would have looked at her.

Folks, even today, as -- because of our daughter Bella, who come to -- came to our rallies, one after another, in wheelchairs, bringing their special needs children and holding signs up of children saying, "I'm for Bella's dad" -- just a -- a beautiful idea of, again, not my story but their stories was what really fuelled our campaign and gave us the -- the energy, at a time when, over and over again, we were told, "Forget it, you can't win."

We were winning. We were winning in a very different way because we were touching hearts. We were raising issues that, well, frankly, a lot of people didn't want to have raised.

SANTORUM: Our best phone call after Iowa was a young man who came to our first event in Oklahoma, in a wheelchair, named Nathaniel, who had spina bifida and wanted someone who spoke about people, again, that are overlooked by society or don't seem to be as valuable as others in society; folks like the Duggars, who -- the Duggar family, who traveled around with us in their bus and gave their time and energy because, again, they believed in the basic importance of having strong families as part of a strong country that we can't have a strong economy, as you've heard me say over and over again, without strong families and a strong moral fiber that makes us the moral enterprise that is America. Even fun things like the sweater vest. Amazing thing that sweater vest.

It happened on a night I was doing an event for Mike Huckabee in Des Moines and showed up and everybody was in suits and ties and I showed up in a sweater vest. And it turned out I gave a pretty good speech that night and all of the sudden the Twitterverse went wild saying, "It must be the sweater vest." And from that point on, the sweater vest became the -- the official wardrobe of the -- of the Santorum campaign. And the cool thing was we -- obviously we have a -- a -- a big part of our campaign is the manufacturing base of the economy.

And so we -- we sourced that sweater vest in a company that was making them here in -- in the United States and so we ended up going to that little company up in Bemidji, Minnesota, in the middle of winter. It was a beautiful day and got a chance to -- to see that little plant that had been around for almost 100 years and turned out we -- we're the best company -- the best customer that Bemidji Woolen Mills has ever had in their entire history. So it's -- it's been a -- it's been a wonderful story after story of -- of people who have come forward.

Two girls who put together a song and -- in Tulsa, Oklahoma called "Game On" who have traveled and followed us around and over a -- over a million hits on YouTube of that catchy little tune that they -- that they were inspired to give. And even today, we have folks working for us in Texas to make it a winner take all primary because they want to make sure that we have the best opportunity to -- for Texas and for conservatives to have a voice throughout the course of this primary.

It -- it has been inspiring to me the story after stories that we've been -- we've been engaged with and it turns out that it really wasn't my voice that I was out communicating, it was your voice. The voice that you gave me from the stories and experience I had. And that's what -- people say, how did this happen? How did -- how were we able to come from nowhere? It's because I was smart enough to figure out that if I understood and felt at a very deep level what you were experiencing across America and tried to be a witness to that, to try to be in a sense, an interpreter of that, that your voice could be heard and miracles could happen.

And so it did. Miracle after miracle. This race was as improbable as any race that you will ever see for president. I want to thank God for that and I want to thank all of you. Thank all of you across this country for what you have given, well hopefully not just me and our family but what you've given which is a voice to those who are in many cases voiceless. And we have tried to be a witness not just for your -- for your stories and your voice, but to provide a positive and hopeful vision, not a negative campaign.

We traveled around and did 385 townhall meetings in -- in Iowa. We weren't out there trashing anybody. We went out in our campaigns as -- from that point on and we painted a hopeful, positive vision for our country. One that was based on how we could get this country turned around, not just economically. Not just economically but reflecting the hopes and -- hopes of Americans not just the fears of Americans. The hopes of Americans as what we can do to confront the -- violent radical Islam and particularly the -- the scourge of Iran and what we could do to take on the -- the problems of a sluggish economy and a Washington that has grown so big.

SANTORUM: We put forth concrete, solid plans that, many of which, came from the people that I had an opportunity to interact with throughout the course and time of this campaign.

We did focus a lot, yes, on the families and on the dignity of human life and on the moral enterprise that is America. And I know Joe Klein'll be upset about this, but one of my favorite articles was the one that he wrote where his headline was, "Rick Santorum's Inconvenient Truths," and talked about things that maybe we should talk about a little bit more but somehow get shoved aside in the public discourse.

We talked about how we were going to build a great country from the bottom up and we carried around our copy of the Constitution. And of course it was that Constitution that got the tea party folks excited, legitimately so, about the operator's manual of America being discarded by those in Washington.

And I think what I tried to bring to the battle was what Abraham Lincoln brought to this battlefield back in 1863, in November 19th, when he talk about this country being conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

He was quoting, of course, the Declaration of Independence, conceived in that declaration. And we talked about that declaration as the heart of American exceptionalism, as to who we are, because we will never be a country that can go forward as a great and powerful country again unless we remember who we are and what makes us Americans.

That's what our campaign was about: about what made us Americans, how we built this country from the bottom up and how, if we are going to be successful in the future, how we must believe in ourselves and believe in that ability to go forward and do the same thing.

Against all odds, we won 11 states. Millions of voters. Millions of votes. We won more counties than all the other people in this race combined.

We were able to spread that message far and wide across this country, and what we found is that, while, we found that support, I found a deeper love for this country. Every state I went to -- and those of you who followed me around, I would say, "I really love this state." It was a love affair for me going from state to state and seeing the differences, but seeing the wonderful, wonderful people of this country who care deeply about where this country is going in the future, who care deeply about those who are out there paddling alone, who are feeling left behind, and in some respects feeling hopeless and want to do something.

Well, ladies and gentlemen, we -- we made a decision to get into this race at our kitchen table and against all the odds. And we made a decision over the weekend that while this presidential race for us is over, for me, and we will suspend our campaign effective today, we are not done fighting.

We are going to continue to fight for those voices. We're going to continue to fight for the Americans who stood up and gave us that -- that air under our wings that allowed us to accomplish things that no political expert would have ever expected. There's a lot of greatness, a lot of greatness in this country, and we just need leaders who believe in that, who are willing to give voice to that, who are willing to raise us up instead of trying to provide for us and do for us what we can better do for ourselves.

SANTORUM: That's the message that -- that came to me and it's one that I feel very, very good about continuing to talk to Americans about. I walked out after the Iowa Caucus victory and, "Game on." I know a lot of folks are going to write, maybe those even at the White House, "Game over." But this game is a long, long, long way from over.

We are going to continue to go out there and fight to make sure that we defeat President Barack Obama, that we win the House back, and that we take the United States Senate, and we stand for the values that make us Americans, that make us the greatest country in the history of the world, that shining city on the hill, to be a beacon for everybody for freedom around the world.

Thank you all very much. God bless you.