Rick Santorum suspended his campaign for the GOP presidential nomination, effectively giving Mitt Romney a clear path to be the party's standard-bearer.
Santorum made his announcement in Gettysburg, Pa., just two weeks before the Keystone State primary. Recent Pennsylvania polls had Santorum in danger of losing the state where he was a senator for 12 years.
"We made the decision over the weekend that while this presidential race is over for me, and we will suspend our campaign effective today, we are not done fighting," Santorum said "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."
By suspending his campaign, Santorum will no longer be actively running for the White House. But he will be able to continue raising money for his political activities through the political action committee he launched for the 2012 election. Santorum immediately sent out a fundraising appeal, asking donors to help reduce his campaign debt.
Shortly after Santorum's news conference, Romney issued a statement hailing his rival as "an able and worthy competitor, and I congratulate him on the campaign he ran."
Santorum opened his news conference by thanking people for their prayers for his youngest daughter, Bella, who was hospitalized on Friday and released last night.
Her condition "caused us to think ... about the role we have as parents," Santorum said, adding that the weekend was a time for "prayer and thought" about his future.
Santorum's decision marks the end of an unpredictable ride for the former Pennsylvania senator, who was seen as having little chance for the White House more than a year ago when he launched his bid.
Santorum's rise to the final four GOP presidential candidates was unlikely, especially because he had lost his 2006 re-election bid as a Pennsylvania senator by more than 17 percentage points.
Despite being underfunded and in low single-digits in most national polls for much of 2011, Santorum concentrated on meeting Iowa voters in small groups so he could do well in the first-in-the-nation caucuses. His surprise showing in Iowa -- after weeks of vote counting he was declared the winner by a tiny margin -- positioned him as a viable candidate, and the sweater vests that he wore while campaigning became a symbol of his success.
Santorum's wife, Karen, and the couple's older children were ever-present on the campaign trail and at election-night parties. Santorum suspended campaigning at least three times since last year because of Bella's health, including most recently this weekend.
Bella, now 3 years old, suffers from trisomy 18, a rare genetic disorder. Also known as Edwards syndrome, trisomy 18 is caused by the presence of all or part of an extra 18th chromosome. There is a low rate of survival, and Santorum has often talked about how Bella was not expected to live past her 1st birthday.
