Christian Conservatives and the Republican Candidates

In the aftermath of the Values Voters Summit in Washington this weekend, there's been a bit of a shakeup in the "God-o-Meter."

There was no update on John McCain. He didn't get much support from the Christian conservatives in their straw poll, either. One has to wonder if McCain's pandering to the religious right has backfired.

Mitt Romney stayed where he was, which was at the top. Fred Thompson, Mike Huckabee and even Rudy Giuliani went up slightly, perhaps from the exposure of speaking to the summit attendees.

There have been no updates recently on the Democratic side.

A week ago, Fred Barnes of The Weekly Standard was saying that Giuliani needed to make a serious commitment to the pro-life position when he spoke to the social conservatives. Now, Barnes is saying that Giuliani made inroads with Christian conservatives with some of the things he said yesterday.

Apparently, that "inroads" assessment conveniently overlooked the fact that Giuliani got less than 2% of the vote in the Values Voters Summit straw poll. Giuliani doesn't seem to be building a groundswell of support among Christian conservatives for his candidacy.

By the way, the Philadelphia Inquirer has an interesting observation or two about the Republican race.

And Steven Greenhut of the Orange County Register sees the libertarian and conservative factions that Ronald Reagan brought together in the 1980s splitting apart.

Such a split was inevitable, without a charismatic force like Reagan to keep them together.