Evangelicals voting in record numbers in GOP primaries

Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum. RNS archive photo.

By DAVID GIBSON
c. 2012 Religion News Service
Reprinted with permission

(RNS) Making up half of Republican primary voters, evangelicals appear to be turning out to support Rick Santorum’s resurgent campaign in record numbers and are increasingly influencing the shape of the party.

Perhaps just as important, conservative Christians are increasing their crucial financial support and volunteer hours as Santorum tries to keep his momentum heading into Tuesday’s (March 20) Illinois primary.

According to the Faith and Freedom Coalition, headed by longtime evangelical political activist Ralph Reed, evangelical Christians account for just over 50 percent of the turnout so far in the Republican primaries, the highest rate ever and a significant increase over the 44 percent evangelical voting rate in 2008.

Moreover, Santorum has won a third of those votes, compared to Mitt Romney’s 29.74 percent and Newt Gingrich’s 29.65 percent.

Faith and Freedom based its analysis on the entrance and exit polling data from 16 primaries and caucuses. The data show that some 4.29 million evangelical Christian voters have cast ballots so far — or 50.53 percent of the 8.49 million total votes cast.

Reed said the turnout is up across the board, and not just in the South, where conservative Christians helped deliver a two-state primary sweep of Alabama and Mississippi to Santorum last Tuesday.

“Conservative people of faith are playing a larger role in shaping the contours and affecting the trajectory of the Republican presidential nomination contest than at any time since they began pouring out of the pews and into the precincts in the late 1970s,” Reed said.

They are also putting their money where their values are.

Santorum is collecting nearly half of his donations from donors who gave less than $200, according to an analysis of Federal Election Commission filings by the Campaign Finance Institute — a higher percentage than any of his Republican rivals.

And while Santorum has trailed his rivals in overall fundraising, he may be catching up fast. Politico reported that Santorum raised $9 million in February compared to Romney’s $11.5 million, Santorum’s best month yet.

Santorum’s campaign also said that in the wake of Southern primary victories, Santorum raised $1 million over a 24-hour period through a grass-roots “money bomb” drive. That is in addition to some $1.8 million pledged by wealthy conservatives, many of them evangelical Christians, at a Santorum fundraiser on March 9 in Houston.

The Susan B. Anthony List also announced on Thursday that it would move its bus tour and mobilization effort for Santorum to Illinois — the kind of “on the ground” efforts that have brought Christian conservatives out for Santorum and upended the predictions of polls and pundits.

“I think there has been a long-term political impact beyond the endorsements” of big-name Christian leaders, said John Green, an expert on religious voting patterns at the University of Akron in Ohio.

Green likened the evangelical support for Santorum to black voters in the 2008 Democratic primaries, who initially backed Hillary Clinton but coalesced around President Obama once he took Iowa and got on a roll.

“There is a pent-up demand for a certain kind of candidate, but that candidate has to demonstrate that they can win,” said Green. Big endorsements, he said, act as a kind of “pump primer” to get voters — in Santorum’s case, Christian conservatives — ready to jump on board.

Whether that can carry Santorum to a win in Illinois on Tuesday is uncertain. The former Pennsylvania senator is close behind Romney in most polls, and Illinois’ downstate Republicans tend to be conservative Christians like those in the deep South.

Ironically, Santorum would get a huge boost by doing something he has not yet done: win the votes of his fellow Catholics. Santorum is often mistaken for an evangelical by GOP voters; a recent Pew Forum survey showed that among Republican and Republican-leaning voters, just 42 percent of Catholics know that Santorum is himself Catholic.

But as James Warren wrote in The Atlantic, Santorum graduated from a Catholic high school in Illinois, Carmel High School outside Chicago. That could give him a leg up in Obama’s home state, and a critical win over Mitt Romney.

“A Santorum victory in Obamaland next week would be stunning — but it wouldn’t necessarily be a surprise,” Warren said.

Belief Bytes: Wednesday’s Religion News Roundup

Courtesy of Religion News Service

Charles Darwin’s birthday, more political conscience wrangling and Christian conservatives angry about the Obama administration’s requirement of employers to provide free birth control – all in Wednesday’s Religion News Service Religion Roundup.

Here’s an excerpt:

“As you’ve probably heard by now, Mitt Romney trounced Newt Gingrich and the rest of the GOP field in Florida.

Romney even edged Gingrich in the “evangelical/born again Christian” vote, 38 percent to 37.

I would have liked to see a breakdown of the Jewish vote after those Kosher robocalls.

Gingrich is still hoping for a Super Tuesday miracle, but as Romney pivots toward the general election, some politicos say his Mormon church’s racial history could pose a problem.

In other news, Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua of Philadelphia died, just a day after a judged had ruled him competent to testify in a landmark sexual abuse trial.

Sen. Marco Rubio brought a bill to the floor that would repeal health care mandates that he says violate religious freedom or conscience rights.”

Read the rest of the post here.

NEWS ANALYSIS: The end of ‘compassionate conservatism’?

Amy Sullivan is a writer and former senior editor at Time magazine who covers politics, religion and culture. RNS photo courtesy Amy Sullivan.

By AMY SULLIVAN
USA Today
c. 2012 Religion News Service
Reprinted with permission

(RNS) The Republican presidential candidates competing for the affections of Florida voters have plenty of labels with which to tar each other: Influence peddler. Failed politician. Cayman Islands account holder. Aspiring polygamist.

But perhaps the worst smear they could lob at an opponent would be to call him a “compassionate conservative.”

There’s no place for compassion in this race, which has featured debate audiences cheering the death penalty and booing the Golden Rule.

Candidates have jostled to take the hardest line in opposing government-funded programs to help the poor, with Newt Gingrich

Newt Gingrich Image via Wikipedia

calling Barack Obama a “food stamp president” and Rick Perry blasting “this big-government binge (that) began under the administration of George W. Bush.”

Just three years after Bush left the White House, compassionate conservatives are an endangered species. In the new Tea Party era, they’ve all but disappeared from Congress, and their philosophy is reviled within the GOP as big-government conservatism.

Is this just a case of the Republican Party wanting to distance itself from the Bush years — or is compassionate conservatism gone for good?

Bush was not the first person to use the phrase “compassionate conservative,” but his adoption of the label in the 2000 campaign made it instantly famous. Bush and his advisers sought to soften the GOP’s image, which had taken a beating during the years of Gingrich’s speakership and the Clinton impeachment. Bush’s faith-based initiative was the signature policy to grow out of his compassionate conservative philosophy.

In 2008, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee also ran for the GOP nomination as a compassionate conservative, refusing to apologize for supporting state tuition breaks for the children of illegal immigrants: “You don’t punish a child because a parent committed a crime.” Huckabee was fond of saying that he was a conservative, just not angry about it.

Like the Ecuadorian horned tree frog, a handful of compassionate conservatives can still be found, if you know where to look. Sen. Dan Coats, R-Ind., who was involved with faith-based initiatives before Bush ever heard about them, is one. And former Bush aide Michael Gerson continues to preach the gospel from his perch as a Washington Post columnist.

After the Iowa caucuses, both Gerson and New York Times columnist

David Brooks hailed former Sen. Rick Santorumas the second coming of

Rick Santorum Image via Wikipedia

compassionate conservatism. And it’s true that in his victory speech in Iowa, Santorum sounded very much like a populist, arguing that Republicans need to offer more than tax cuts and balanced budgets to Americans who are struggling.

But when it comes to specifics, there aren’t many government policies — particularly domestic programs — that Santorum supports to help alleviate poverty. He cheered most of the harsh cuts in hunger and housing programs that House Republicans proposed this summer. Santorum, a devout Catholic, has said that he believes the U.S. Catholic bishops are wrong to back immigration reform, and he has confessed he is unfamiliar with the phrase “a preferential option for the poor,” which is an essential component of Catholic social teaching.

There is a meanness to the way many Republicans talk about the poor these days that was not en vogue during the Bush years. Unlike Huckabee, they are angry conservatives.

Gingrich spits out the words “food stamps” and implies they are gold coins showered on undeserving recipients. When debate moderator Juan Williams asked Gingrich whether his comments are “intended to belittle the poor and racial minorities,” he was roundly booed by the conservative audience in South Carolina.

The conservative Heritage Foundation released a report last September arguing that those living under the poverty line in the U.S. aren’t really poor because they have refrigerators and microwaves.

What happened to compassion? One answer is that it turned out to be expensive. Providing housing and food assistance, giving grants to charities that help low-income Americans, supporting job training programs — these all cost money. The federal deficit ballooned during the Bush administration, and though much of that came from funding the Iraq War and an expensive Medicare prescription drug benefit, Bush’s domestic faith-based programs and tripling of U.S. aid to Africa have been tagged with the blame.

In addition, the Tea Party movement has embraced what political writer Jill Lawrence calls “Darwinian conservatism.” You could also call it “Ayn Rand conservatism,” after the libertarian philosopher whose work many congressional Republicans praise. In 2010, Republican Senate candidates attacked programs such as Social Security, student loans and unemployment benefits, saying they made Americans lazy.

The debates in this election cycle have also encouraged the turn away from compassionate conservatism. Led by Gingrich, the candidates have played to audiences hungry for red meat. These party faithful lustily cheer attacks and boasts, and they boo any statement that carries a whiff of moderation.

Just before the South Carolina primary, a progressive Christian group called the American Values Network released an animated video, “Tea Party Jesus,” to mock the disconnect between popular conservative rhetoric and Gospel teachings. In a “Sermon on the Mall,” a cartoon Jesus stands flanked by GOP politicians and pundits as he declares, “Blessed are the mean in spirit … blessed are the pure in ideology.” It didn’t take long for a Tea Party site to promote the video instead of taking offense.

Tea Party activists might not have gotten the joke, but if the Republican Party rejects completely the idea of compassion for struggling Americans, it will be no laughing matter.

Editor’s Note: A version of this story originally appeared in USA Today.

(Amy Sullivan is a writer and former senior editor at Time magazine who covers politics, religion and culture.)

Belief Bytes: Your Thursday Religion Roundup

Nancy Pelosi and Newt Gingrich. Courtesy of RNS archives.

From Religion News Services’ David Gibson, it’s mostly political news most of the time in today’s Religion News Roundup. I especially like the reference to Dylan Thomas’ lovely poem and the link.

Here’s a nibble:

“Rick Perry, once the Great Evangelical Hope, is dropping out. Was he ever in it?

Perry reportedly will throw his support – and both his supporters – behind Newt Gingrich. That should ice it.

Tough day all around for Mitt Romney: Turns out Rick Santorum actually won the Iowa caucuses, so he can claim he is doing as well as Mitt – until Saturday, at least.

The churn brings us to our Existential Question-of-the-Day: Is the Religious Right dead or alive?

On life support? Or just kidding themselves?

If the Christian right is dying as a political force, it is not going gentle into that good night. To wit:

Romney’s four (now three) challengers ripped into him last night at a pro-life forum in South Carolina last night. Romney, perhaps wisely, was not there.”

For the full post/entree, click here.