In the 2008 Republican nominating process, Mike Huckabee got off to a good start by beating Mitt Romney in the Iowa caucuses by a 34%-25% margin over Mitt Romney. Huckabee campaigned as a “Christian leader” and won the votes in a contest in which 60% of the votes were cast by self-described evangelical and bornagain Christians. But Huckabee, despite sparkling performances in debates and a better command of popular culture than any candidate in either party, was not able to win more than 15% of the vote in later contests among voters who did not describe themselves as evangelical and bornagain Christians. So he was unable to beat John McCain.
Rick Santorum, who won a 25%-25% tie in Iowa, where 58% of caucusgoers described themselves as evangelical and bornagain Christians. The question for him is whether he—a Northern Catholic rather than a Southern Baptist like Huckabee—can do better than Huckabee among evangelicals and bornagains. I have thought that his campaign tactics in New Hampshire—taking endless numbers of questions from cultural liberals who oppose his stands on cultural issues and volunteering (as if anyone was really interested) that he thinks contraception is immoral—risked putting him in a religious conservative box, from which, despite his considerable record in and knowledge of economic and foreign issues, he could not do any better than Huckabee. The evidence from the New Hampshire exit poll suggests I was right. Among the 21% of New Hampshire primary voters who identify as evangelical or bornagain Christians, Santorum did pretty well, although not well enough to build up some margin against Mitt Romney: he got 26% of the votes, against 28% for Romney and 20% for Ron Paul. But among the other 79% of New Hampshire primary votes, Romney won 37%, Paul 24%, Jon Huntsman 20% and Santorum only 7%, behind Newt Gingrich’s 9%.
That’s well under Huckabee levels. Admittedly, New Hampshire’s Republican electorate is unusually secular as compared to Republican electorates in other states—and much more so than South Carolina’s. But Santorum campaigned hard and gallantly in New Hampshire and just didn’t make a dent in the non-evangelical/bornagain segment of the Republican electorate. Santorum has reasonable claims to appeal to the broad-based Republican electorate. But his campaign tactics seem to be limiting his appeal more than his platform and record need have done.
