WASHINGTON -- Former Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum said on Sunday his supporters need to fight to keep supporters of Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) from influencing the GOP platform.
"I like the platform that we have now," Santorum told host George Stephanopoulos on ABC's "This Week." "I'm concerned that Ron Paul and some of his supporters out there are looking for a platform fight, and I want to make sure we have strong, principled conservatives there who stood with me in our primary fight to go there and counterbalance the effect of the Paul folks."
Paul, who is still technically a candidate for president and has retained the delegates he has won despite the fact that he is no longer actively campaigning for the Republican nomination, holds different views from Santorum on a number of topics. The libertarian congressman advocates keeping the government out of a number of social issues that Santorum believes are crucially important and backs a less hawkish approach to foreign policy.
Santorum made similar comments on Friday, saying he wants "to make sure that our delegates have an opportunity to come" to the Republican National Convention.
"I want to make sure that the folks who represent the values that I did during this campaign are also are able to come to that convention and have their voices heard," he said. "I certainly have encouraged everyone to support Governor Romney as I have, but there are a lot of other issues at the convention other than just voting for the nominee."
Santorum announced on Friday that he will raise funds through a new group, Patriot Voices, to support candidates who share his values, including Mitt Romney.
"A lot of people have some basic anxiety about where America is going, and I tried to talk about those [issues] in the campaign," he said after the announcement on Fox News. "The adherence to the Constitution, and the importance of understanding where our rights come from and who we are as a people, and the culture and how that is being changed by this administration, whether it's liberty or life or marriage."
Santorum also addressed the question of who Romney will choose as his running mate Sunday, saying he has not yet been asked to provide information as part of a vetting process.
"No one's asked me for anything right now," he said. "We're focused on PatriotVoices.com, we're focused on trying to do what we can to help Governor Romney and candidates all across this country by rallying conservatives, getting them excited about this race and the importance of it. That's really all I'm focused on right now."
Below, a look back at some of Santorum's earlier statements:
Before You Go
