Evangelical support for Santorum shows generational shift for Catholic candidates.
Just days after Rick Santorum surged to a virtual tie for first in the Iowa caucuses, conservative activists at an invitation-only summit along the South Carolina coast were buzzing about the former Pennsylvania senator’s sudden and promising breakthrough.
Deal Hudson, who directed Catholic outreach for George W. Bush’s White House before starting the conservative group Catholic Advocate, was among the movers and shakers at the annual Awakening gathering on Kiawah Island. He was especially pleased to hear such praise for a fellow Catholic — until Hudson realized something odd.
“There were a number of knowledgeable people who were very enthusiastic about Rick but didn’t know he was Catholic,” Hudson said with a quiet laugh. “I was really surprised.”
To be fair, those conservative kingmakers may not be the only ones who don’t know what church Santorum attends, much less care. But that, some say, is exactly the point.
Polls in Iowa showed that rank-and-file evangelicals threw most of their support to Santorum, a devout Catholic, rather than either of Santorum’s evangelical rivals, Rep. Michele Bachmann or Texas Gov. Rick Perry. (…)
The answers help explain not only the political dynamics of the current race, but point to a generational shift from the 1960 campaign, when John F. Kennedy had to reassure evangelicals like Billy Graham that he wasn’t too Catholic to be president.
“Now here we are, 50 years later, and evangelicals are not only willing to vote for Roman Catholic candidates but frankly they are flocking to Roman Catholic candidates” like Santorum and Newt Gingrich, said Ralph Reed, head of the Faith and Freedom Coalition and a top evangelical political activist. “This is a big moment in American religious and political history.”
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