Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum won the Iowa caucuses on a razor-thin margin but has been in the also-ran category since. Until tonight, when he won the Missouri caucuses and was leading in both Minnesota and Colorado.

According to Digital Journal results, with two-thirds of the vote counted in Missouri, he had 55 percent of the vote to 25 percent for Mitt Romney and 12 percent for Ron Paul. Newt Gingrich was not on the state’s ballot.

In Minnesota, with about one-fifth of the caucuses reporting, Santorum had 44 percent to 27 percent for Paul, 17 percent for Romney and 12 percent for Gingrich.

In Colorado, one time zone further west, the early reports with 1 percent of the caucuses tabulated showed Santorum at 50 percent, Gingrich at 21 percent, Romney at 19 percent and Paul with 10 percent.

Republican party officials said no delegates were being awarded tonight, so the contests essentially were for bragging rights.

But it would come at the right time for Santorum, as the candidates now have some time off before the Super Tuesday primaries in another handful of states.

Santorum surged out of the gate with his win by a hair over Romney in Iowa, but he fell into a tie for third in New Hampshire, was third in South Carolina, third again in Florida and last in Nevada.

He was elected to the U.S. House in 1990 at the age of 32, then moved into the Senate.

He eventually was part of the “Gang of Seven” who exposed the congressional banking and congressional post office scandals.

One Washington reporter noted Snatorum “was a tea party kind of guy before there was a tea party.”

Santorum promotes himself as the true conservative, with a record of work on pro-life and fiscal restraint issues.

Michele Bachmann, who suspended her campaign earlier after several also-ran finishes among GOP contenders, told Greta Van Susteren on the Fox News Channel that the results are at least partly because of Barack Obama’s fiasco over health care that has enraged leaders in the Catholic church.

“I think you’re seeing a lot of people react against President Obama’s policies … We haven’t had a social-issue election yet. This is the first one,” she said.

“President Obama has done himself no favors on re-election. People are very upset about it,” she said.

Sen. John McCain says it’s important for Republicans to come together on a nominee soon.
“The adversary is President Obama, and the sooner we focus on that the better,” McCain said.

Obama’s health plan now is set to require religious groups such as Catholic hospitals and Christian universities to pay for women’s health care including medications such as the “morning after” pill that many consider to cause abortions.

Catholics have said they won’t comply, and Obama’s compromise to date has been to say the requirement will be held off for one year, when it then would be imposed.

“If Santorum wins [in Colorado] he has a new life,” Denver political analyst Katy Atkinson told the Denver Post. “For Gingrich, who specializes [in] coming back from the dead, if he doesn’t do well tonight that’s OK. It’s not going to stop him. But in terms of Santorum it would be very big for him.”

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