Rick Santorum’s Greatest Hits

<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/22007612@N05/6633686557/">Gage Skidmore</a>/Flickr

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Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum ended his presidential campaign on Tuesday at a press conference in—naturally—Gettysburg, effectively ending the Republican primary and cementing Mitt Romney’s path to 1144 delegates. (You can see just how far behind Santorum was by checking out our primary predictor.) Citing his youngest daughter Bella’s poor health and the realities of the race (recent polls had him trailing Romney in his home state of Pennsylvania), Santorum’s brief remarks were more of a nostalgia trip than a plan of action for going forward. He pointedly did not endorse Romney.

Santrorum’s campaign was a long-shot, and for a while it looked like the lack of media coverage was entirely justified. He hovered in the low single digits for most of 2011 before rising, over the course of just a few weeks, to a first place finish in the Iowa caucuses, and he did it all on a shoe-string budget that saw him travel from one campaign event to the next in a supporter’s pickup truck. Santorum’s unforecasted success, primarily in the Deep South and Sun Belt, served as a constant reminder of Romney’s weakness among some of the GOP’s core consituencies—Evangelicals and people who make less than $250,000 a year.

The former Pennsylvania senator’s role going forward is unclear, but if history is any indication, his second-place primary finish would put him in good position for a second effort, November-permitting, in 2016. Here’s a look at what you might have missed from the campaign that was:

His scorched-earth assault on Romney, even as it became increasingly clear he had no chance at winning.
His shock-and-awwwwwww campaign against abusive puppy mills.
His complete and total reversal on campaign finance.
The wrestling journalist who described his 1989 conversation with Santorum as “asshole central.”
This quiz.
His principled opposition to human–jellyfish hybrids.
His defense of anti-sodomy laws.
His love of coal.
His bizarre attack on single mothers—and equally bizarre end-times theory about Iran.
The fact that Obamacare was designed to help families like his—whether he admits it or not.
His traveling roadshow, which included the aforemention dude with the pickup truck, and the overwhelming majority of the Duggars.
His bizarre assault on prenatal testing, which he called a coordinated effort “cull the ranks of the disabled in our society.”
His tendency to get sidetracked by arguing with college kids about gay marriage.
And…his Google problem.