It looks like Santorum is playing spoiler because evangelicals want social issues to be the top priority.
Which is dumb. You can play the morality game all day long while you’re starving to death.
They want to shut this down?
http://www.newt.org/solutions/protecting-life-and-religious-liberty
It’s the economy, stupid!
(gogododzilla, stupid not directed at you :)
This sure can’t be all Evangelicals, because Evangelicals right now are Newt’s strength, and Romney’s weakness.
80 percent of South Carolina GOP voters identified themselves as Protestants. Their vote breakdown was:
* 42% Gingrich;
* 27% Romney;
* 17% Santorum;
* 12% Paul.
13 percent of South Carolina voters identified themselves as Roman Catholic. Their vote breakdown was:
* 37% Gingrich;
* 29% Romney;
* 15% Santorum;
* 10% Paul.
When you split out the Evangelicals/born agains within the Protestant vote, they voted:
* 44% Gingrich;
* 22% Romney;
* 21% Santorum;
* 13% Paul.
Let’s wait and see. What you are saying doesn’t make sense. I am a Santorum fan but right now, Newt is running as a conservative, mentioning his family all the time. I don’t think hurting Newt at this point will help conservatism or family values.
Some insiders might know other shoes to drop against Gingrich, but Newt has weathered the attacks very well so far.
Let the race continue fair and square. I’m glad Santorum did well. Let them campaign. No one is “closer to Gd than thee” so let’s not have a religious war between them.
It looks like the RINOs in Washington want to use their cocktail party and country club money to try to blunt Mitt’s main competition. It would not matter whether they were social conservatives or fiscal conservatives. Who ever can help Mitt by taking out his main competition (Gingrich) will be flooded with money.
The elites are afraid of Newt. But they know Romney is too weak a candidate to fight him off alone.
You would think that evangelicals would know better than to take the blood money.
You would think the elites would realize how weak this makes Mitt look.
Well, that’s just nuts. Newt is a Christian. He’s confessed his sins, repented, asked for forgiveness and seeks redemption. I have full faith in his sincerity. Torpedoing Newt at this time will deliver the nomination to Romney and the election to Obama. How great can that be?
FURS
Santorum won Iowa and came in only 10 points behind Romney in South Carolina. After what happened to Bachmann, then Perry, then Cain...it might be good to have one more parachute on hand in case Newt is next to stumble.
Any Evangelical who thinks family issues is going to be the driving force behind this election is an idiot.
It’s going to be jobs, debt, economic performance, and the military.
All strong points with Newt.
We need to win over the santorum voters that can be won over and marginalize those that can not which means Rick Santorum needs to be mitigated, not eliminated. I want Santorum to stay in for a while. It gives us the opportunity to win over as many of his supporters as possible without immediately offending all of them and sending them teary eyed and angry into the Romney camp.
I wonder if what’s really happening is that these “evangelical leaders” are being asked by the GOP establishment to be money launderers to funnel money to Santorum without it looking like he’s getting money from the establishment, but getting it from evangelicals. While the launderers gets to keep part of this money for their role.
‘One evangelical leader I spoke to said, If Newt wins, we wont be able to make family values an issue in the general.’
Pretty stupid logic. Christianity requires repentance and reform, not perfection. Even Jimmy Carter understood that. Pity this ‘evangelical leader’ does not.
How is Rick a spoiler. Voters vote the way they want. Making veiled attacks at Social Conservatives is nonsense. Newt won tonight and that makes it a win for all candidates so far state wise.
If he's actually a leader he can give his name, otherwise the whole report is nothing but hearsay.
What? People outside of South Carolina might not be open marriage fans?
I respect Santorum, though I believe and have believed that he cannot be elected president.
Something about his personality fails to inspire, that is just a reality. Something I learned from my younger brother is that he is also viewed as “too conservative” by some for whatever its worth.
People need to understand that this is about defeating Hussein Obama, and for that we need a fighter.
I do not believe that this is a time to die on the hill of idealogical purity and perfection.
This is the time to defeat our homosexual communist muslim racist president.
Let’s roll!