Rick Santorum: 'GOP Group Is Too Big For One Debate; Split It Into Two'
By Chris Stigall
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- Former Pennsylvania Senator and current presidential hopeful Rick Santorum spoke with Talk Radio 1210 WPHT morning host Chris Stigall about the ever growing Republican presidential candidate field.
"Four years ago, towards the end of the campaign I talked about what a great experience it was running for president and would say in all my campaign speeches, I'd say 'you know, this is a great experience. Everybody should run for president.'Little did I know people would take me up on it."
Stigall was worried that with some candidates in the field such as Donald Trump would take a seat in the highly important debates away from "more serious" candidates such as Santorum or Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, but that is not something that the former Pennsylvania Senator is concerned with.
"We should have a debate that include everybody and when I say everybody not necessarily on the same stage. Sixteen would not work, but if you divide it into two groups you could easily have two debates of eight people and it would work very very well. For some reason they haven't really looked at how you could create more of a egalitarian debate, that they want to separate it out between the varsity and the junior varsity. That's really sad because there's really a lot of wonderful people who have a lot to say who very well could win the nomination who are not right now in the top of the national polls. Some of them haven't announced. Some of them just like myself just announced a couple of weeks ago. That's unfortunate."
Regardless of whether or not he will be in any or all of the debates, Santorum is putting his complete confidence behind the voters of the early primary states (Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina), because they are "the folks that are really paying attention" and overall feels that if "You go out and work hard and you do the best you can and things tend to work out."
"I'm not worried about debates. If I'm in them great. If I'm not them that's fine. It will all work out."
