Republican Presidential candidate Rick Santorum. Photo: wiki commons.

Rick Santorum has announced the end of his 2012 bid for president.

“This Presidential race is over for me and we will suspend our campaign effective today” he said at a press conference in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania on Tuesday.

Santorum spoke heavily about the stories his campaign heard across America.  He called the ability to hear those stories an “honor”.

“It’s been a wonderful story after story of people who have com forward,” he said.

Santorum referred to the “tea party folks who got excited” about his campaign’s promise to abide by the constitution, saying “we will never be a great and powerful country that can go forward again if we forget who we are”.

The suspension of Santorum’s 2012 presidential campaign effectively makes Mitt Romney the de facto challenger to Barack Obama in November.

Santorum won the Iowa Caucus in early 2012 and he was able to win the delegates of another ten states, but the conventional wisdom among most political analysts over the past few weeks has been that Romney would be the Republican nominee for President.

“Miracle after miracle, this race was as impropable as any race that you will ever see for president,” Santorum said.

A spokesman for Santorum’s campaign told MSNBC that Mitt Romney had contacted the former Senator about a meeting and that Santorum is open to the idea.

“Senator Santorum is an able and worthy competitor, and I congratulate him on the campaign he ran. He has proven himself to be an important voice in our party and in the nation.  We both recognize that what is most important is putting the failures of the last three years behind us and setting America back on the path to prosperity,” Romney said in a statement.