Fundie Leaders Give Santorum A Worthless Endorsement

About 150 of the most vicious right-wing fundamentalists in America just finished having a meeting in Brenham, Texas. The meeting included some of the most well-known religious bigots this country has to offer -- such as James Dobson (Focus on the Family founder), Kelly Shackelford (CEO of the Liberty Institute), Don Wildmon (American Family Association founder), Gary Bauer (president of American Values), and Tony Perkins (president of Family Research Council), just to name a few.

The purpose of their meeting was to find a candidate they could unite behind in the hope of keeping Mitt Romney from becoming the Republican presidential nominee. They think he is the race leader only because the teabagger/evangelical vote is being split between too many candidates. These "social conservative" leaders think if they unite behind a candidate, then the teabagger/evangelical voters will follow them and vote for that candidate -- and defeat the flip-flopping mormon candidate.

The attendees at the fundie summit boiled the race down to three candidates -- Newt Gingrich, Rick Perry, and Rick Santorum. It took several ballots, but Rick Santorum came out the victor in the end. He is now the "official" candidate of the religious right. I guess they will now try to convince South Carolina (and Florida) voters that they should abandon Perry and Gingrich, ignore Paul, and all happily vote for Santorum (so Romney won't get the nomination).

Will it work? Probably not. It probably won't work because voters really do tend to have a mind of their own. They may not vote with knowledge and common sense, but they do vote for whoever they want to vote for -- regardless of what others may want them to do. Santorum may have the endorsement of America's leading religious bigots, but the hard truth is that endorsements simply don't win many votes -- whether it's from religious leaders, well-know politicians and personalities, or newspapers.

This is verified by a recent survey done by the prestigious Pew Research Center. The survey, done January 5th through the 8th of 1,000 American adults, found that most voters say that  endorsements would make no difference in how they would vote. This is true of both Republicans and Republican-leaners for the primaries. But even more interesting is the fact that an endorsement by leading Republican figures could actually hurt a candidate in the general election (where Independents will have a much bigger say in who gets elected).

Here are the results of that survey:

I'm sure those that met in Brenham last week thought they had accomplished something. But they're going to be very disappointed when the fundie voters don't vote in a monolithic bloc as they want. I'd love to see Santorum as the Republican candidate (since I think Obama would easily beat him), but the days of leaders picking candidates for voters to rubber stamp with their votes is over. Like it or not, actual Republican voters will choose their party's candidate.