Daily Santorum: Candy & Bowling

Rick Santorum heads to the Jelly Belly Candy Company in Fairfield, Calif., today to deliver a "major address on the need to have a strong American foreign policy."

As the Los Angeles Times reports, the seemingly unlikely locale has deep ties to Ronald Reagan, whose name is spoken in hallowed tones by Republicans on the campaign trail.

From the story by Seema Mehta:

While running for governor, Reagan relied on the candies as he tried to stop smoking a pipe. His favorite flavor was licorice. When Reagan took office in 1967, the candy-maker, then known as the Herman Goelitz Candy Co., regularly sent shipments to the statehouse. Reagan kept a jar on his desk.

"They have become such a tradition of this administration that it has gotten to the point where we can hardly start a meeting or make a decision without passing around a jar of jelly beans," Reagan wrote in a letter to the candy maker.

That tradition continued when Reagan became president. The candy-maker, now making jelly beans with real fruit juice, created a blueberry-flavored bean especially for Reagan so he could serve a patriotic red, white and blue assortment at his inaugural festivities in 1981.

Santorum has candy ties himself, as ABC News reports: From 1997 until leaving his seat in 2007, he stocked the Senate's "candy desk."

The former Pennsylvania senator is also getting attention for his challenge, reported yesterday in the Washington Examiner, to bowl against Mitt Romney. (According to the story, Santorum studied Bowling 101 at Penn State.) Molly Ball writes in The Atlantic that this challenge is no good sign for the Santorum campaign.