Livius, it's been clear all along that some Santorum supporters are willing to vote for a Mormon with a clean moral life. Many people simply cannot conceive of a Mormon being socially liberal, and do not understand that the Romney family has a record going all the way back to the 1960s of being devout in their personal lives but not “imposing their religion” in their elected positions.
Basically, Mitt Romney is a Mormon version of John F. Kennedy, with all the bad things that implies, except that I think Romney is faithful to his wife and actually believes what his church teaches.
The way to overcome that is to make clear just how unreliable Mitt Romney is on abortion. Based on Romney's history of judicial appointments to the state court system in Massachusetts, we risk a President Romney nominating more David Souters and Sandra Day O’Connors.
Abortion is a no-go issue for most evangelicals. I can make a long list of things I don't like about Newt Gingrich, but none of them are more important to me than Gingrich's undoubted positions against baby killing and against Islamofascism.
Gingrich is not my preferred candidate, but he's the last conservative left, and Romney is simply unacceptable.
Abortion is a no-go for most secular (l)ibertarians too. Even for those of us who are religious, secular (l)ibertarians.
From my perspective, those Social Conservatives that would not vote for Gingrich because he screwed around on two or three wives...and since claims biblical repentance...are simply hypocrites.
And they are certainly no friend of the conservative movement.
Under their own standard they would vote for Romney or Obama over Gingrich.
That's just plain 'ol stoopid.