Saving Santorum?

On Saturday, more than 150 prominent Religious Right leaders met in Texas in a last-ditch effort to unite around a GOP presidential candidate and stop frontrunner Mitt Romney from securing the nomination. Rick Santorum was the clear winner, receiving 85 votes on the final ballot. Newt Gingrich came in a distant second with 29 votes. What remains to be seen is whether social conservatives can sway the results of the primaries, especially this late in the game.

In South Carolina, where 60% of 2008 GOP primary voters were evangelicals, it’s possible but unlikely. Romney is hanging onto a consistent lead in the polls (and playing up his pro-life credentials), and Gingrich appears to have a firm grip on second place. There’s still four days before Saturday’s primary and anything could happen, but Santorum’s trailing position will test the limits of religious conservatives’ influence and capacity to turn things around at the last minute.

It’s tempting — but wrong — to view these recent developments as a sign of the Religious Right’s disarray or irrelevance. With the economy continuing to dominate the political agenda and the public dialogue, conservative Christian groups are skillfully cloaking right-wing economics with moral arguments (just like the GOP candidates). I was struck by this New York Times report from the weekend meeting:

“In the discussions, [Family Research Council President Tony] Perkins said, participants were as concerned about repealing Mr. Obama’s health care law and fighting the national debt as they were about abortion and same-sex marriage.”

While social conservative leaders might distrust Mitt Romney, they share his right-wing economic views. Once the nomination is settled (regardless of the outcome), they’ll get to work helping defeat President Obama by telling evangelical Christians that trickle-down economics, slashing the safety net and letting Wall Street write its own rules are effective, moral responses to poverty, unemployment and the deficit. Even if they fail to blunt Romney’s momentum, they’ll still play an important role in the general election.

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