Was Santorum's Endorsement by the Christian Right Rigged?

I love it! Nothing is more fun than watching the Kool-Aid drinkers get in a brawl and start attacking one another. And that seems to be precisely what is happening in the wake of Rick Santorum's supposed endorsement by a coven of roughly 150 Christofacsists over this past weekend at a conclave held at a ranch in Texas. Increasingly, it sounds like the outcome may have been rigged and that Tony Perkins - what a surprise - was lying when he claimed that a consensus had been reached by the self-anointed and self-congratulatory pious ones. It is also perhaps noteworthy that the coven met before coverage of Karen Santorum's abortion doctor former boyfriend swept across the Internet. Michelle Goldberg has a piece at The Daily Beast that looks at the growing acrimony and back stabbing going on by those of us in the LGBT love to hate. Here are some highlights:

The attempt to unify the Christian right behind a single presidential candidate is already coming undone. On Friday and Saturday, about 150 religious conservatives gathered in Texas to see if they could coalesce behind an alternative to Mitt Romney. When the meeting ended, Tony Perkins, head of the Family Research Council, announced that they had succeeded, with a supermajority of those present backing Rick Santorum.

Some attendees, though, say the process was rigged in Santorum’s favor. “I’m trying to correct the record,” former congressman J. C. Watts, a Newt Gingrich supporter, told me. “There wasn’t a consensus.”

He’s [Watts] not the only one making such claims. Doug Wead, an evangelical outreach official in the Bush administration, was the meeting’s lone Ron Paul supporter. According to the Washington Times, he voiced suspicions that “organizers ‘manipulated’ the gathering and may even have stuffed the ballot to produce an endorsement” of Santorum. “By the time the weekend was over, it was clear that this had been definitely planned all along as a Rick Santorum event,” Wead told the paper.

All this means that with less than a week until the South Carolina primary, the religious right is as far from consensus as it ever was. The movement’s diffuse enthusiasms were evident at a Monday afternoon Faith and Freedom Coalition rally in Myrtle Beach, where all the candidates spoke . . .

Rick Perry’s appeal was the most overtly theocratic. Speaking of gays and lesbians, Perry said, “I hate your sin, but I love you.” If voters support him, he said, “We can build more than just a winning campaign. We can bring about the next great awakening in this world.” This was met with applause, though it’s hard to find anyone in South Carolina who still takes his bid for the nomination seriously. Romney isn’t particularly comfortable in such milieus, but the crowd reacted enthusiastically to his promise to fight China’s one-child policy.

[T]he contest for the group’s affections was between Santorum and Gingrich. Santorum urged the audience to overlook whatever they’ve heard about electability.

And so the would be GOP presidential nominee clown car and its theocratic hangers on continues to roll across America. The rest of the world must be shaking its head in dismay at the pathetic choices the GOP has fielded.