Just call him "the Rooster": a primer on the sweater-vested former Pennsylvania senator who's suddenly looking like a threat to win Iowa.
ROCK RAPIDS, IOWA -- Rick Santorum, the former Pennsylvania senator who's enjoying a last-minute surge in Iowa in advance of Tuesday's Republican caucuses, has made a name for himself in Iowa but is still a mostly unknown quantity nationally. Here are 11 things you might not know about the latest GOP contender to seize the fickle 2012 spotlight.
1. He Has a Google Problem. In a 2003 interview, Santorum said allowing same-sex marriage could open the door to other unacceptable relationships, such as "man on child" or "man on dog." Enraged by the equating of homosexuality with pedophilia and bestiality, sex columnist Dan Savage, who is gay, asked his readers to redefine "Santorum" as a disgusting sexual term, then enlisted their help to boost the new definition in Google rankings. It remains the No. 1 non-sponsored result for the former senator's distinctive last name. What does it mean? Well, you can Google it (NSFW).
2. He's Always Worked This Hard. In Iowa, Santorum has become known for his dogged retail campaigning -- he's logged more than 350 campaign events in all of the state's 99 counties. It was a similar story in 1990, when Santorum got his start in politics at the age of 32 by unexpectedly knocking off a seven-term incumbent congressman in a strongly Democratic district in the Pittsburgh suburbs. He knocked on thousands of doors and bludgeoned his opponent for spending too much time out of the district. His win was considered so improbable, he says, that the National Republican Congressional Committee didn't know his name on Election Night. Thrown into an even less GOP-friendly district by redistricting in 1992, he repeated the feat, and in 1994 he knocked off an incumbent Democratic senator.