"Smart people" in America will never back conservative Republicans, or so says Rick Santorum – a conservative Republican whose verbal missteps are becoming as well-known as his hardline posturing on social issues.

Santorum, who ended up being Mitt Romney's closest rival for the 2012 Republican nomination, made the comment at the conservative Value Voters Summit in Washington.

"We will never have the media on our side, ever, in this country. We will never have the elite, smart people on our side," Santorum said in a speech to the gathering of conservative activists at a Washington hotel.

Santorum, a former Pennsylvania senator, entered the Republican primary race as a little-known outsider.

But he ran a dogged and hardworking campaign based on his appeal to social conservatives and eventually emerged as a serious threat to the more establishment Romney.

Though Romney eventually triumphed, Santorum's success ensured the nomination process was longer than many had expected and he emerged with a much higher profile.

But Santorum also made several notable gaffes along the way. At one campaign stop where he talked about welfare, he appeared to say that he didn't "want to make black people lives better by giving them somebody else's money". He later claimed he had simply garbled his words, and didn't say "black" people, just something that sounded like "black".

He also once suggested people should vote for Obama over Romney in order to experience how radical a president the Democrat would be.

And, in discussing gay issues, he compared gay people getting married to napkins, saying: "I can call this napkin a paper towel. But it is a napkin. And why? Because it is what it is."