Santorum Nears Goal of 99 Iowa Counties

There are 99 counties in the state of Iowa, and presidential candidate Rick Santorum will have visited every one of them by Friday of next week.

The former Pennsylvania senator has been making a direct appeal to social conservatives on the ground, and now he's taking his case to the Internet, posting web videos that focus on issues of faith. Social conservatives were crucial to pushing Mike Huckabee into first place in the 2008 caucus, and the Des Moines Register poll out Saturday will offer a measure of whether he's been able to inspire their support.

In the web video "What's Next," which has generated some media buzz but has only garnered 6000 YouTube hits since it was posted Thursday, the Santorum campaign takes a sharp-edged look at Herman Cain's "pro-choice position on abortion." The negative attack video is "unlisted" and not part of the main page of the candidate's official YouTube account, meaning only those with the link can see it.

Asked whether Santorum plans to take out the frontrunner by attacking his position on life, Santorum's communications director Hogan Gidley said in an email, "Mr. Cain's pro-choice position is a problem for sure, but it's only one in a long line of liberal stances he's taken in the past. Mr. Cain is Pro-TARP, pro-Tax and Pro-Choice -- and I'm not sure any true conservative voter is going to overlook that in Iowa or anywhere else on election day."

At the back of the pack, Santorum is often snapping at the heels of frontrunners on any vulnerability he sees, but what's clear is that his campaign is trying to build momentum by focusing on his faith.

Featured on Santorum's YouTube main page is a video posted Thursday entitled "Family," which opens up with Santorum reflecting on his relationship with God in seeking the presidency. "People have asked me...over these last 18 months whether I'm running, and I always say ‘I'm walking.' And I'm walking because I'm trying to walk in the path that God's leading me in. And a big part of that is the responsibility that you have as a husband and father."

With that, Santorum transitions into talking about his family of 7 children, and in particular, his special needs daughter Bella, who is now 3-years-old.

"We were told by the doctors that Bella's life expectancy was a matter of hours and days," Santorum says, recalling his youngest child's earliest days in the hospital. "And so we felt blessed that we had Bella and yet we were told by the medical community, ‘Why do anything. Just let her go. She's... not going to be able to do much. She's not going to be able to..be like normal children, so you should just let her go.' It angered us to hear that because she was our daughter like every other one of our children and we were not going to let her go."

Santorum reportedly grew emotional when talking about Bella's close encounter with death in South Carolina earlier this week.

"I always say Bella makes us better," Santorum says in the web video. "Some people describe people like Bella as disabled children. And I look at her, and I look at the joy and simplicity and the love that she emits, and it's clear to me that we're the disabled ones, not her, she's got it right."