Santorum to drop
Watch his Gettysburg press conference live here on CNN. UPDATE 2:46: The remarks are in full here on YouTube.
UPDATE: 2:40 PM Romney's statement:
Boston, MA – Mitt Romney today made the following statement on Rick Santorum’s announcement:
“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.”
Unsourced reports are coming in that he's suspending his presidential campaign in advance of what polls show would be an embarrassing loss in Pennsylvania.
Rick Santorum called Mitt Romney Tuesday to say he is ending his presidential campaign, Yahoo News has learned.
Santorum is scheduled to make an announcement at a press conference in Gettysburg, Pa., at 2 p.m. ET.
Calls to several campaign aides from Yahoo News were not returned before the event.
National Review's Robert Costa has his farewell already up:
Rick Santorum was a C-list Fox News pundit and damaged-goods former senator when he announced his improbable candidacy last year, and many politicos expected him to join the ranks of Shapp and Specter. It was going to be a vanity run for an ambitious Italian-American kid from Butler, Pa., who wanted one last turn in the national spotlight. After this final bout in the arena, he’d fully retreat into the K Street coterie of influence peddling and punditry, as so many ex-lawmakers do.
Iowa changed everything. Santorum, surprising even his closest aides, began to campaign like it was 1990, when he was an unknown upstart gunning for a congressional seat near Pittsburgh. He took off his suit jacket and put on a sweater-vest. For what seemed like the first time in years, he began to smile. In the mid-2000s, we’d all come to view Santorum as a grim culture warrior, but the snarl faded as he traveled around the Hawkeye State in a battered Dodge pickup.
While he's dropping out of the race, his name will still be on the April 24 ballot. There is no legal mechanism this late in the game to remove his name from the ballot, says the Department of State's Ron Rumen, as the formal challenging period has passed.