Rick Santorum quits White House run

Santorum made the announcement in his home state, two weeks before a round of voting there for the presidential primary for the right-wing conservative party that has dragged long, where he would have faced Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul, besides frontrunner Romney.

"This race is over for me,'' Santorum, who has been at the receiving end of many jokes for his staunch social conservative agenda where he once famously said that not even rape victims should not resort to abortion and consider the unwanted pregnancy "a gift of god".

Trailing in polls and fundraising and seen largely unlikely to garner a lead over Romney as the Presidential Primaries moved to more liberal states, he and his family had made the decision over the weekend after his 3-year-old daughter's latest hospitalisation.

Having long derided Romeny as an unworthy standard-bearer for the Republicans, Santorum conspicuously made no mention or endorsement of his rival who, however congratulated Santorum as an "able and worthy competitor".