Evangelicals Support Santorum

Last Saturday, the evangelical leaders met in Texas to deliberate and decide whom they are going to support. At first, the religious leaders were divided among Perry, Gingrich, and Santorum. However, Santorum’s group persuaded the leaders that the former senator from Pennsylvania has been defending their religious values and that unity is important.

While opponents questioned the support for Santorum, the religious leaders explained that they chose him because they believed he could beat Romney and Obama.

Upon learning the religious leaders’ support, Santorum wanted to turn their support into concrete votes. He also wanted to use this endorsement to raise more funds. This evangelical support would help his team plan future efforts and ways to approach the South Carolina Primary. This would allow them to spend more in South Carolina without worrying on running out of money in Florida.

Many of the evangelical leaders are planning to join and bring in volunteers to South Carolina to help Santorum. Local church leaders would also ask their parishioners to seek support by doing phone calls and sending out emails. Hogan Gidley, senior advisor to Mr. Santorum, said, “Once that switch is flipped, the conservative community activates like no other.”

However, other conservative candidates especially Gingrich continued to seek support. He argued that he is better than Gov. Romney because he has more experience and would represent a break with status quo. He said, “If you want peaceful, pleasant managing the decay, I’m the wrong person. What I stand for is such a disruption in the Washington establishment.” Santorum and Gingrich are now competing to get the full support of the conservative block. Gingrich tended to dominate debates with his one- liner arguments, while Mr. Santorum until recently was ignored.

Santorum is planning to connect to South Carolinians in a more personal way. He is also going to use a class- based argument against Gov. Romney. He said that he has “a much better chance of winning those states than an executive from Bain Capital.”

Now, all they have to do is to convince the voters to unite behind Santorum. But as long as Gingrich and Perry are in the race, Santorum will have a problem achieving unified conservative voters.

What do you guys think about this new support for Santorum? Can this help him win South Carolina and other primaries? Or the conservative group is too dispersed to bring him votes? Will Gingrich and Perry quit the race?