Rick Santorum Enters The GOP Presidential Race

The former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum has joined the Republican 2012 presidential race, promising to run on a socially conservative ticket.

Santorum's anti-abortion and anti-gay views could attract support in Iowa, where evangelicals are numerous and where the first of the caucuses is scheduled to be held in February.

Although he has been campaigning in Iowa and other key election states for months, he made the formal declaration that he is standing in an interview with ABC television on Monday morning.

"We're ready to announce that we are going to be in this race and we're in it to win," Santorum said.

He has an outside chance in a field in which is still wide open. Mitt Romney, who stood in 2008, leads the polls but there is little enthusiasm for him so far among grassroot Republicans, especially rightwingers.

In a recent Gallup poll Santorum, 53, was placed well down the field, recording only 2%. But a good showing in the debates, with the next scheduled for New Hampshire next Monday, could change that.

He is a stubborn conservative, insisting, long after even the Bush administration had conceded the point, that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

Santorum is from a Catholic family in Pennsylvania, his father an immigrant from Italy and his mother a nurse. He has seven children.

He helped pass a bill banning late-term abortions, and caused anger in 2003 when he said states had the right to ban gay sex or other behaviour "antithetical to a healthy, stable, traditional family".