Santorum supporters stop in Mount Pleasant Tuesday
A group of Rick Santorum supporters on a bus tour made their final stop in Mount Pleasant before heading to Grand Rapids on Tuesday.
The group has traveled over a period of five days, making 17 stops throughout Michigan. They are not part of Santorum's official campaign.
The tour was sponsored by multiple pro-life and pro-family groups including the Susan B. Anthony List, Catholic Vote, Culture War Victory Fund, Campaign for Working Families and Let Freedom Ring.
“I was in the house with Santorum,” said former congresswoman Marilyn Musgrave, R-Colorado. “We fought the good fight standing up against partial birth abortion and standing up for the life of the unborn and families.”
He was the first to sign a pledge called the Presidential Plan for Religious Freedom, Musgrave said.
She said the group is hoping for good results in the Republican Primary Tuesday evening.
The group isn't too worried about Santorum’s fellow candidate Mitt Romney and is expecting Santorum to win, said Director of Culture War Victory Fund Maggie Gallagher.
“He’s more than a candidate; he’s a cause,” Gallagher said.
Money isn’t everything, she said, and it’s the money behind Romney’s campaign that has kept him going.
Gallagher said she’s pro-Rick and wouldn’t consider herself anti-Romney. She said she believes Santorum won’t “shift with the wind" on his political positions and can beat President Barack Obama in the fall.
She said it will be bigger if Romeny can’t win in his self-declared home state, and believes he won’t be a winning candidate in the fall.
“The recent debate about contraceptives is a plan by Obama to distract voters,” Gallagher said. “Santorum is a good man that cares about our concerns, even those of unborn children.”
The debate about religious entities providing insurance that will cover contraceptives is really about religious liberty, said President of catholicvote.org Brian Burch.
No one is proposing to ban contraception, Musgrave said, it’s just that the government shouldn’t get into religion busting.
“In some sense, Santorum speaks past the media and immediately to the people. That’s why he is surging.” Burch said. "If it’s the Democrat voters turning the tide for Santorum, that will be just fine.”
