GOP right: Rally around non-Mitt

Associated Press

WASHINGTON

Prominent conservative leaders want their rank and file to quickly get behind a single presidential candidate — Rick Santorum now seems the likeliest — fearful that persistent splits will help Mitt Romney win the Republican nomination.

“While no political candidate, or human being for that matter, is perfect, Rick Santorum’s baggage contains his clothes,” CatholicVote.org president Brian Burch said Thursday, after Santorum’s virtual tie with Romney in Iowa won the support of the 600,000-member online organization.

“Republicans hoping to win back the White House in November must unite behind the candidate most dedicated to the foundational issues of faith, family and freedom.”

Romney narrowly won the Iowa caucuses when conservative voters split their support among several challengers, and the worry is that the same thing will happen in South Carolina, Florida and beyond if Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry all stay in the race.

In the afterglow of Santorum’s unexpectedly narrow loss to Romney in Iowa, leaders on the right who have been scarcely engaged in the rollicking Republican contest began buzzing about the prospect of endorsing the former Pennsylvania senator with the solid conservative credentials — or someone else such as Gingrich who has deep conservative roots.