Romney has won endorsements both from those in the GOP establishment and from some elected officials with connections to the tea party movement. His campaign and some party leaders will press for more.
But unity depends in part on Romney’s success at winning over those conservatives — many of them evangelical Christians — who have supported Santorum over the past two months as he became the principal challenger to the front-runner and who have seemed most resistant to a former governor from liberal Massachusetts who also happens to be a Mormon.
The divide within the party has been stark. Romney has not won a primary contest in a state where evangelical Christians made up more than half the GOP electorate — nor has he lost one in a state where evangelicals made up less than half the electorate. Optimistic Republican strategists say that divide will close quickly as the nomination contest fades and the general-election campaign takes shape.
“With only a few exceptions, evangelicals were not opposed to Romney, they just preferred another candidate as their first choice,” said Whit Ayres, a Republican pollster. “They will now rally around Romney, just as the liberals who were upset that Obama followed Bush’s anti-terrorism policies will rally around Obama.”
The former governor needs those voters to be as energized as possible to ensure that they don’t stay home in November. His choice of a vice-presidential running mate, his campaign message and his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention, assuming he is the nominee, would be critical to winning them to his side.
But there is no unanimity about how Romney should proceed now that Santorum is out. To the end of his campaign, Santorum continued to attack Romney as not a real conservative. How lasting that damage may be among conservatives will now be tested.
“Romney has to build bridges to evangelical voters, who he will need to turn out in large numbers in November,” said Ralph Reed, who leads the Faith and Freedom Coalition. Reed added: “I think Romney understands this and will take whatever steps are necessary to energize social conservative voters. Evangelicals will turn out to vote against Obama. Now it’s important that they are enthusiastic about voting for the Republican nominee.”
Tony Perkins, who heads the Family Research Council and who backed Santorum’s candidacy, issued a statement challenging Romney to demonstrate his commitment to the issues most important to religious conservatives. “If the Republican establishment hopes to generate this same voter intensity in the fall elections,” he said, “Santorum voters must see it demonstrate a genuine and solid commitment to the core values issues.”
But Alex Castellanos, a Republican strategist, warned against a strategy aimed specifically at wooing evangelicals. “The worst thing Mitt could do now is turn inward and worry about consolidating evangelicals and the party,” he said. “He needs to be a general, face forward toward the enemy and lead the troops into battle against the president of European-style government, Barack Obama. That will get the army marching in step.”
Romney spokesman Eric Fehrnstrom created an uproar recently when he said the start of the general-election campaign would be an Etch a Sketch moment, interpreted as meaning that Romney would try to wipe clean the slate from the primary campaign and present himself as a moderate.
Romney quickly vowed that he would run against Obama as a conservative. On Tuesday, a Romney adviser, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to be candid, put it this way: “Voters will now look at Mitt differently and through a different prism. We can use this new beginning as an opportunity to reintroduce the campaign and the candidate.”
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