An Evangelical Vote Of Confidence For Santorum; Gingrich Still Gets Support

01-14-2012

In a nutshell:  Rick Santorum hit a homerun today with evangelical leaders. Newt Gingrich came to the plate and wound up with a standup double.

And Rick Perry? A big strikeout.

What happened in Texas this past weekend could be the boost Santorum so desperately needs. He got an overwhelming majority of evangelical leaders to endorse his candidacy. Officially, he got 85 out of 114 votes cast this past weekend in Texas.

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There was a feeling before the meeting that a consensus would not be reached but clearly that changed. Within the room there was a sense that many of the leaders needed to stand with Santorum because the former senator from Pennsylvania had stood with them throughout the years on key public policy initiatives.

Santorum is getting the evangelical support that Mike Huckabee did not get in 2008. If he had gotten that support four years ago, things may have turned out differently. For Santorum, it’s important that this comes at the beginning of South Carolina week rather than later in the week or into Florida.

There should be time now to see a possible uptick in the polls. We’ll see. The jury is still out on that especially because this will not be a coordinated effort by evangelical leaders to rally to Santorum’s side. This will done by leaders individually.

There’s a reason Santorum got this boost. He’s been a trench warfare guy for years. He has really carried the baton for many causes near and dear to the hearts of these evangelical endorsements.

Now, as for the other candidates let’s discuss. For Rick Perry, this is a major blow. If the train hadn’t left the station already with him, it sure is on its way out of town now. Perry said all the right things about Jesus and wearing his faith on his sleeve, but evangelical leaders (and voters) are more sophisticated than that. Just because you invoke the name of Jesus doesn’t mean you get a free pass if you can’t remember the three agencies you want to cut. Perry’s faith was in the plus column but the minus column had too many checkmarks.

As for Newt Gingrich, don’t count him out. This wasn’t a clean sweep by Santorum and Gingrich clearly had evangelical support in the room. Remember that Gingrich has important endorsements from Don Wildmon of the American Family Association, Beverly LaHaye who founded Concerned Women for America, Tim LaHaye, the founder of the Council for National Policy (CNP),George Barna, one of the leading faith researchers in the country, and of course J.C. Watts, a minister of the gospel and a former congressman too.

More coming later.

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