At SC Summit, Santorum Touts Foreign Policy Experience

He’s not officially in the race, but that’s merely a technicality.

Former Sen. Rick Santorum is gearing up for a presidential run, telling the crowd at the South Carolina Freedom Summit on Saturday that “Commander-in-Chief is not an entry-level position,” and insisting he’s got the experience needed to deal with a troubling world.

For example, Santorum has a detailed position on illegal immigration, a key foreign policy concern.

“The southwestern border is out of control. The way to bring it under control is more and better fencing and more smartly-deployed manpower,” he wrote this week in an op-ed for Breitbart News. “To be effective, a fence needs to be similar to the border fencing that Israel uses – high with barbed wire, a screening fence, and a patrol road along it.”

He also wants to track the coming and going of immigrants with visas (roughly 40 percent of illegals are people who have overstayed their legal visas), reduce the number of people who are allowed to come here legally (to help American workers), and crack down on those who employ illegals.

Santorum also noted that, as a senator, he was author of key parts of the sanctions regime that brought Iran to the nuclear bargaining table. President Obama has weakened those sanctions, he says, in the hope of getting a deal.

But, Santorum warned, “Iran is not a country you can negotiate with.” He promised a much tougher line to prevent the self-declared Islamic Republic from developing a nuclear weapon.

The former Pennsylvania senator has a “special announcement” scheduled for May 27. Expect him to make a presidential announcement at that time — and to be a foreign-policy force on the GOP debate stage in the months ahead.