A Marist poll out Sunday morning shows that in Florida's January 31 presidential primary, Newt Gingrich maintains a substantial lead over Mitt Romney, up by 15 points, 44 percent to 29 percent.
Finishing a distant third is Ron Paul at 8 percent, and Rick Perry is fourth with 4 percent.
Perry is also in fourth place in the all-important state of Iowa, host of the first caucus in just three weeks. Iowa is also the home to a lot of evangelical Christians (six in ten who participated in the 2008 Republican contest, according to Reuters), and the Texas governor began his last-ditch effort to salvage his campaign there by releasing an ad last week called "Strong," in which he laments an America where "gays can serve openly in the military but our kids can't openly celebrate Christmas or pray in school." He blames President Obama for the "war on religion" and promises to "fight against liberal attacks on our religious heritage."
(MoveOn.org said as of last week that more than 300,000 had said they didn't like the ad. The liberal activist group is trying to get over a million people to say they dislike it).
On Fox News Sunday, Perry was asked by host Chris Wallace what Obama had to do with allowing prayer in school, since the Supreme Court ruled against school-sponsored prayer in 1962.
This article appears in Dec 8-14, 2011.