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Former Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania plans two major announcements on Wednesday night about his candidacy amid speculation that he is pulling out of the race.

His longtime adviser, John Brabender, would say only that Mr. Santorum would make the announcements on Fox News, but he would not detail what he would say. But typically such announcements are a suspension of a candidacy or an endorsement of someone else. Mr. Santorum has been critical of Senator Ted Cruz of Texas recently and appeared last week at a rally Donald J. Trump held while skipping the most recent Republican debate.

The planned announcements by Mr. Santorum, 57, will come just hours after Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky pulled out of the race.

Mr. Santorum narrowly won the Iowa caucuses in 2012, edging out Mitt Romney, but his campaign never caught fire this time around, and he came in 11th in Monday’s Iowa caucuses.

In 2012, Mr. Santorum, a Roman Catholic and the father of seven children (an eighth died as an infant), ran his campaign on a shoestring budget, driving around the state in a pickup truck, dressed in his famed sweater vest. Mr. Santorum’s hard-line conservative stances, like his opposition to same-sex marriage and abortion rights, helped endear him to the state’s deeply religious voters, as did his youngest daughter, Bella, who was born with a rare genetic disorder.

This time around, Mr. Santorum completed the “Full Grassley” — visiting all of Iowa’s 99 counties, in a feat named after the state’s senior senator, Charles E. Grassley — but he watched as the state slipped from his grasp. He never polled high enough to earn a spot on the prime-time debate stage, depriving him of valuable free news media attention, and even stunts like showing up at Mr. Trump’s rally last week failed to give him traction.

Rand Paul and Rick Santorum Pull Out of G.O.P. Nomination Race Senator Rand Paul earned just 4.5 percent of the vote in the Iowa caucuses Monday, and Rick Santorum, a serious challenger for the Republican nomination in 2012, got even less.