Can Santorum exploit evangelical support in SC and Florida?

On Saturday a group of evangelical leaders and conservative activists agreed to endorse Rick Santorum for the Republican nomination for president, a meeting convened by Tony Perkins, president of the influential Family Research Council.

The endorsement is being viewed as a last-minute attempt by social conservatives to unify around a single candidate as an alternative to Mitt Romney, who has always been viewed with suspicion by that group. But is it too last-minute?

Naturally Santorum says it's the shot in the arm that will propel him going into South Carolina next Saturday, and presumably Florida the week after and beyond. But Newt Gingrich says that social conservative love is going to flow his way.

Speaking on NBC's Meet The Press, Gingrich said he nearly received as many votes as Santorum inside that secret meeting.

MR. GREGORY: So your feeling is that despite what the social conservative group said over the weekend, Rick Santorum doesn't have any more momentum here? He's not the obvious conservative alternative choice to Romney?

FMR. REP. GINGRICH: No. I think the fact is if you look at the actual vote yesterday that we were very close in the vote and that, in fact, the folks who'll be speaking out starting at noon today, Congressman J.C. Watts, Reverend Jim Garlow and others, are very committed to my candidacy and I think we will go into the next week, this last week of the campaign with a large amount of momentum here. The polls have all shown consistently that I am the strongest rival to Romney in South Carolina and I think that the debate tomorrow night will be a very important part of that and the debate Thursday night will be a very important part of that. And I think it's going to be a very, very lively week, one of the most important weeks in the history of the GOP because I think nominating somebody who is essentially a Massachusetts moderate makes it much harder to defeat President Obama and nominating somebody who is a Reagan conservative makes it much easier to defeat President Obama.

This article appears in Jan 12-18, 2012.