The Sweet Smell of Desperation

Influential evangelical Christian leaders on Saturday endorsed Rick Santorum for the Republican U.S. presidential nomination, in an attempt to strengthen him as the more conservative alternative to front-runner Mitt Romney.

A fair number of evangelicals regard Catholics as being even worse heathens than they regard Jews. Old-line evangelicals held that Catholics were heathens. For Catholics in the South, it was not unusual for them to come outside after Mass to find that their cars had been leafleted by the Baptists.

It was not unusual for the Catholic and Jewish kid to band together, for they had a common enemy. Among a lot of New York Jews, who were only a couple of generations removed from the immigrants from Slavic Europe, hooking up with Catholics was heavily frowned upon. But things were different in the South.

It is a sign of desperation when those same evangelical church leaders are turning to a Catholic to save them from Flip-Flop Mitt.