The Christian Right, a loose coalition of conservative evangelicals and fiscally conservative Catholics who make up around forty per cent of the Republican Party, going into the primary season hoped to play a significant role in determining the eventual candidate to challenge Obama in the 2012 elections. The common wisdom was that conservative evangelicals would not vote for a socially and fiscally moderate Mormon and would instead coalesce around a strong conservative candidate who shared their religious beliefs and could be relied upon to put those shared values into practice on taking office.
One thing was clear, that candidate could not be Romney because of his flip flopping on abortion and healthcare, and holding religious beliefs regarded by many conservative evangelicals as cultish rather than Christian. They did not want a repeat of their perceived mistake in not supporting Mike Huckabee in 2008, until it was too late, which led to McCain's nomination the worst alternative for the movement.
This time there was no shortage of authentic Christian Right candidates to appeal to conservative evangelicals and right wing Catholics including born again Christians Rick Perry, Michele Bachmann and Herman Cain and Roman Catholics Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum. The problem was which one to coalesce around Perry, Cain and Gingrich have all surged only to fall back again.
Perry and Cain's implosions were self-induced while Bachmann never quite convinced even conservative evangelicals that she was a viable presidential candidate. Perry and Cain have since endorsed Gingrich despite the former Speaker's marital history and ignominious departure from the House as the candidate closest to their conservative values and most likely to defeat Romney, if not Obama.
The Christian Right as a movement has made attempts to coalesce around one candidate; Bachmann was urged unsuccessfully to stand aside for Santorum before Iowa and in the middle of January 150 conservative evangelical activists met in Texas to try and agree on one candidate. The event, organised by Tony Perkins of Family Research Council, James Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family and Donald Wildman, founder of the American Families Association, before the South Carolina primary saw Santorum emerge as the most popular candidate but the meeting failed to endorse him or persuade Perry and Gingrich to stand aside. Gingrich went on to win in South Carolina gaining twice as much support from born again evangelical Christians as Santorum.
This failure to choose between Gingrich and Santorum as the conservative candidate is problematic for the Christian Right leadership. James Dobson, Tony Perkins, and president of American Values Gary Bauer have each endorsed Santorum while Tim LaHaye, bestselling author of the Left Behind book series and pollster George Barna have endorsed Gingrich. The main problem for the Christian Right is that their supporters do not appear to be listening to them despite the Family Research Council providing a presidential voter guide.
Newt Gingrich's current position as the preferred choice of conservative evangelicals is based on pragmatism that simply cannot envisage Santorum, who lost heavily in the 2006 midterm elections, as being a credible challenger to Obama. The idea that the Christian Right can be seen as a monolithic group solely concerned with traditional social conservative issues around abortion and gay marriage is dissipating. Rather than supporting the "anyone but Romney" line favoured by their leadership, significant numbers of grassroots conservative evangelicals have demonstrated a willingness to support Romney as the candidate most able to defeat Obama.
While Gingrich has fascination as an exciting candidate able to articulate Christian Right values and debate Obama, his capacity to either self-destruct or lose interest, makes prospects of victory in November seem too great a risk. Conservative evangelical born again Christians are willing to make common cause with a Mormon, who looks and sounds presidential and has moved to embrace some of their favoured policy positions, rather than see Obama returned for a second term.
Romney has received significantly greater support from born again evangelicals than in 2008 in the caucuses and primaries contested so far. Apart from Iowa, Romney has consistently received a larger percentage of the evangelical vote than Rick Santorum, winning among this group in New Hampshire, coming second in both South Carolina and only by a narrow margin in Florida. The victory in the Nevada caucus also saw Romney achieve his first decisive victory among born again evangelicals.
While there are still likely to be a number of twists and turns, up to and including Super Tuesday in March, it may well be that grassroots evangelicals are ahead of their leaders and that a Romney nomination will be achieved not only through outspending opponents and attack ads but through a positive endorsement by this movement as they finally coalesce around the candidate most likely to defeat Obama...