The two speakers at tonight’s convention who will vie to lead the GOP in 2012, should John McCain fail this year, are Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee.
What’s the biggest difference between those two candidates and McCain? It’s that Romney and Huckabee campaigned as pro-family candidates, painstakingly wooing the Christian Right, while McCain has ignored that base until now, a couple months before Election Day.
Consider these choice excerpts from Mitt Romney’s address:

–Opportunity rises when children are raised in homes and schools that are free from pornography, promiscuity and drugs; in homes that are blessed with family values and the presence of a father and a mother. America cannot long lead the family of nations if we fail the family here at home!
–Did you hear any Democrats talk last week about the threat from radical, violent Jihad? Republicans believe that there is good and evil in the world. Ronald Reagan called-out the Evil Empire. George Bush labeled the terror-sponsor states the Axis of Evil. And at Saddleback, after Barack Obama dodged and ducked every direct question, John McCain hit the nail on the head: radical violent Islam is evil, and he will defeat it!
–To this we are all dedicated and I firmly believe, by the providence of the Almighty, that we will succeed.

Or this line from Mike Huckabee tonight:

–He doesn’t want to change the very definition of marriage from what it has always meant throughout recorded human history. It is not above John McCain’s pay grade to grasp the simple fact that human life begins at conception, and he is committed to protecting it.

It seems to God-o-Meter that the Christian Right is back on the ascent. If McCain is elected, it will be in no small part because of his 11th hour campaign to rally Christian conservatives to his side. If McCain loses, the two men competing most zealously to be the next Republican nominee are working even harder for Christian Right support. After being counted out since 2006, the movement is sitting pretty.

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