Let the tug-of-war begin....
Social conservatives back Rick Santorum
The group of social conservative leaders meeting in Texas this weekend has thrown their support behind Rick Santorum.
In a conference call this afternoon, Family Research Council chief Tony Perkins said that on the third ballot Santorum won a solid majority of votes from the movement conservatives gathered at a private ranch near Houston.
Of 114 votes cast, Santorum won 85. Newt Gingrich took the remainder.
In a remarkable slap in his home state, Rick Perry didn't even make it past the first ballot, Perkins said.
Santorum backers were already taking to Twitter in the moments after Perkins announced the decision to tout the news. The former Pennsylvania senator, largely absent from the political conversation since finishing well behind Mitt Romney in New Hampshire and staying out of the Bain debate, is badly in need of a lift. In that sense, the endorsement is well-timed.
But, more broadly, the decision of such conservative movers as Perkins, Gary Bauer and James Dobson to wait until the week before the South Carolina primary to make a collective endorsement appears more than a little tardy.
The move to coalesce behind one social conservative alternative would have been more valuable a month ago - before Romney had already already won the first two states and was in the lead in both South Carolina and Florida.
Perkins acknowledged that there was some discussion at the beginning of the meeting -- attended by about 150 people at the home of Paul and Nancy Pressler-- that they were moving late.
But he insisted that now is "exactly the right time going into South Carolina," and noted that few delegates had been allocated.
more:
http://www.politico.com/blogs/burns-haberman/2012/01/social-conservatives-back-santorum-110869.html
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