RUSH: Here’s what happened last night. Santorum gave his speech after the Hawkeye Cauci for the most part was over. It was so powerful, and he never uses a prompter, and he never even uses notes. He did last night for a brief moment at the outset of the speech, quoting C.S. Lewis in what ended up being a tribute to his wife. It’s how he opened it. And he said, “Look, I normally don’t use notes, but I want to read this ’cause it’s a quote, and I want to get it right.” And I’ll paraphrase the C.S. Lewis quote ’cause it’s not in the sound bites that we have. He said, “A best friend is somebody who knows the song in your heart when you have forgotten the words.” Now, I’m paraphrasing that. C.S. Lewis said it a little bit more eloquently than that, but your best friend is somebody who knows the song in your heart when you have forgotten the words. And, at that point, he turned to his wife. After that, total ad-lib.

And what happened after that was Romney spoke after Santorum. Romney ordered his teleprompter taken down. And he winged it, because Santorum’s speech was so authentic. It was from the heart. It’s why he doesn’t need notes. Now, we have three sound bites. I had people sending me e-mail during the top-of-the-hour break, “I’m glad you’re gonna do this ’cause I’ve looked for the speech on YouTube but I can’t find it,” which is unfortunate. But that’s why Joe Trippi last night said, (paraphrasing) “You know, if I were Santorum I’d get down there at 11 o’clock and I’d make this speech in time for the 11 o’clock news. I don’t care if the vote tally is not final. It’s close enough that you know you’re gonna be in the top two, so go down there and just act like you’re the winner.”

He didn’t do that. They all waited until after all but two counties were in, so it was after 12:30. We only have three sound bites, but we have the whole speech. Cookie has the whole speech. If we want to roll it all off we could at some point. But here we go with the three that we have. Don’t forget the way it opened. The C.S. Lewis quote, your best friend, somebody that knows the song in your heart when you’ve forgotten the words. And then he turned to his wife, gave her a big hug and kiss. So here are three sound bites. This is number one.

SANTORUM: People have asked me how I’ve done this, sitting back at the polls and not getting a whole lot of attention paid to us. “How did you keep going out to Iowa and 99 counties, and 381 town hall meetings and speeches?” Every morning when I was getting up in the morning to take on that challenge, I’ve required a strength from another particular friendship, one that is sacred. I’ve survived the challenges so far by the daily grace that comes from God. For giving me his grace every day, for loving me, warts and all, I offer a public thanks to God.

RUSH: First words, by the way, were “game on.” He came out saying, “Game on!” Okay, so here’s Santorum, who’s unafraid to talk about God. The next bite he addresses electability.

SANTORUM: People have asked me, “Well, why do you think you can win?” Because we’ve been told by so many people that there’s another candidate in this race who is running a rather close race with me tonight (laughter) that is a better person to choose because he can win. Let me tell you what wins. What wins in America are bold ideas, sharp contrasts, and a plan that includes everyone. And a plan that includes people from all across the economic spectrum, a plan that says we will work together to get America to work.

RUSH: Comes this concept of “team.” If he takes this further, I think it’s fertile ground. I think one of the — if I may say so — one of the problems that many of you have, maybe you’re not even consciously aware of it this way. But we know that politics consists of teams and we haven’t felt like we’re on ours. We have felt like our team doesn’t want us. Santorum comes along, something about this whole thing last night, for me, felt inclusive being part of a team. And that’s important. Being part of a team with a singular or multipurpose, but identical goals, the expenditure of energy to achieve them, there’s something energizing and unifying about that. And a lot of conservatives, a lot of Republicans have not felt as though they are on a team, but rather independent contractors.

Now, I don’t know if that’s gonna manifest itself this time around, but I do know that if it does happen it’s going to be extremely powerful. ‘Cause everybody wants to be on a team, particularly a winning team. How many of you, for example, would love to know what it feels like to be on a Super Bowl winning football team or a World Series winning baseball team? You look at the number of human beings who are alive in America compared to the number of people who will ever be on such a team. At any one time there are 53 active players on a Super Bowl team, you have the practice squad roster and you have the coaches and the front office staff. You’re basically talking 120 people who comprise the winning team out of 300 million. That’s how unique it is. In baseball the same thing, basketball a little smaller. But forget Super Bowl and baseball. In your local community being on a winning team doing something is an upper like very few things are. And it’s been a facet or an aspect in politics recently that has been absent, at least for some of us on our side.

It’s not that there hasn’t been a team; it’s been that the team is comprised of people that don’t win. And who wants to be on a losing team at the end of the day? But everybody wants to be on the winning team. Everybody wants to be part of it. And to the extent that whoever our nominee is can create that reality for people, that we’re all on a team, there’s nothing I can think of being more inspiring or motivating. In fact, in large part, I can say that this is one of the strengths of Reagan. Everybody felt they were on the same team and a winning team and a team that was winning for the country to boot. I mean it was a win-win-win all the way around. So when Santorum talks about a plan that includes people from all across the economic spectrum and a plan that says we’ll work together to get America to work, it’s gonna take a team effort to get this all done, turned around and fixed. Here is the last of the three Santorum sound bites that we have.

SANTORUM: If we have someone who can go out to western Pennsylvania and Ohio and Indiana and Wisconsin and Iowa and Missouri and appeal to voters that have been left behind by a Democratic Party that wants to make them dependent instead of valuing their work, we will win this election. Those are the same people that President Obama talked about who cling to their guns and their Bibles. Thank God they do. They share our values about faith and family. These are the basic values that Americans stand for, and those are the values that we need if we’re gonna go up against Barack Obama and win this election and restore the founding principles of our country to America.

RUSH: It was really a heartfelt speech. It was a good speech and it went on probably about 10 or 15 minutes. Those are just three sound bites. Here is the Santorum quote. C.S. Lewis said, “A friend is someone who knows the song in your heart and can sing it back to you when you have forgotten the words.” That’s the definition of a friend. That’s from Santorum’s speech. And I do have a YouTube link for it that we’ll send up to RushLimbaugh.com. You really should take the time to watch it.