Palin confidant offers forum to Rick Santorum
A day after Sarah Palin turned heads by lavishing praise on Rick Santorum during an interview on Fox News, conservative filmmaker and Palin confidant Steve Bannon has booked the former Pennsylvania senator for an hour-long interview on his radio show.
Santorum will appear as a guest on Bannon's "Victory Sessions" on Los Angeles' KABC on Sunday night.
"We're going to give an entire hour to have him walk through his argument for why he should be the Republican nominee and specifically about Gov. Palin's comment about how he's the most ideologically consistent candidate and how that compares and contrasts with the others," Bannon said.
In the Fox interview on Thursday night, Palin told host Sean Hannity that she did not necessarily believe the Republican race had boiled down to a Mitt Romney vs. Newt Gingrich showdown.
Palin then went out of her way to tout Santorum, commending his positions on foreign policy, abortion and taxes.
"If voters start kind of shifting gears and decided they want ideological consistency, then they're going to start paying attention to, say, Rick Santorum," Palin said.
Despite having conducted more extensive campaigning in Iowa than any other candidate, Santorum has struggled to get any traction in the polls there, or in any of the other early-voting states.
The Santorum campaign moved in immediately to capitalize on Palin's praise for him, sending an email to supporters that highlighted her remarks.
Palin's endorsement has been heavily courted by all of the major Republican candidates, but she has not said whether she will get behind one of them before voters head to the polls.
The former Alaska governor has not always spoken so fondly of Santorum. Back in February, she made headlines when she responded to his backhanded criticism of her decision not to attend the CPAC conference in Washington.
"I wouldn't have turned it down," Santorum said at the time. "But I don't live in Alaska, right, and I'm not the mother to all these kids, and I don't have other responsibilities like she has."
Palin's response?
"I will not call him the knuckle-dragging Neanderthal that perhaps others would want to call him," she said. "I'll let his wife call him that instead."
Full CBS News coverage: Rick Santorum
