Republican hopefuls woo Christian vote

For the faithful at Ohio's Diamond Hill Cathedral, only one opinion poll matters before Super Tuesday: who would God vote for?

"We're going to have to pray and find out," said Clint Hardin, 57, a leader at the complex in Mansfield, which includes a cavernous church, a biblically themed dinner theater, and Biblewalk -- a sort of biblical Madame Tussaud's boasting 300 full-size wax figures.

Ohio is the most important of 10 states up for grabs Tuesday in the drawn-out Republican primary contest. And although most bets are on Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum is seen by many as having God on his side.

A Roman Catholic denouncing abortion, gay rights and mandatory insurance coverage for contraception, Santorum ticks important boxes for America's conservative Christian voters.

"Santorum has all the values a lot of us are looking for," said Tonya Goulding, another parishioner at Diamond Hill, where she and a dozen others were rehearsing their upcoming play, "He Brought Us Out Of Egypt."

White Protestants are a key Republican bastion, but while Santorum is Catholic, his fire-and-brimstone rhetoric makes him more acceptable than Romney, a Mormon who used to be governor of liberal-leaning Massachusetts.

Paul Beck, a political scientist at Ohio State University, said Santorum deploys religion as a strategic "wedge."

"For Santorum it's the way to take votes away from Romney, to say this guy is not as conservative as he says he is, and to say he's not true to conservative values."

If Romney prevails in the primaries, he will surely still be able to count on the religious right in his efforts to unseat President Barack Obama in November.

But just as Obama faces doubts about the enthusiasm of his own core supporters, there are question marks over the extent to which this year's crop of Republicans can fire up their vital base.

At Diamond Hill, which sees more than 200 people cram the pews every Sunday, hundreds more attend the theater evenings, and tens of thousands visit the museum, there is more despondency than joy over Romney.

Even Santorum, who this month questioned Obama's Christian credentials and attacked the long-held principle of separating church and state, hardly inspires hallelujahs.

"I don't know that he's got the capability to take on the Obama machine," Goulding, 39, said. "That's what we need. He can be the moral leader we're looking for, but can he beat Obama -- and if not, where does that get us?"

"If only you could somehow fuse Romney and Santorum," mused Goulding's husband, Steve, 43. "We're going to pray about it, obviously."

The gap between America's religious conservative and liberal worlds can appear almost unbridgeable.

Suspicious about evolution, opposing abortion under any circumstance, and pretty much believing the country reached its pinnacle around the time of George Washington, the religious right provokes bewilderment and scorn among leftists.

But the faithful at Diamond Hill, like those at the countless churches in America's small towns, are the same regular folk that candidates of all stripes claim to be fighting for.

Hardin works at FedEx, Tonya Goulding is an esthetician, Steve Goulding works for Rolls-Royce engines, and even the church's fiery pastor, Richard Diamond, used to labor at General Motors.

And while many Americans wouldn't agree with Hardin's prophecy that Obama has a "spooky" socialist master plan, there's nothing radical about his lament that politicians are "primarily now about the power and the money" rather than "protecting the people."

Everything at the impressively organized cathedral was built by church volunteers, including Biblewalk, where a full tour costs $20.

Here, what seem to be repurposed department store mannequins -- blonde hair flowing incongruously over Middle Eastern robes -- are used to tell familiar scenes from the Old and New Testaments.

An elaborate tableau of the Last Judgment, shows Jesus, wearing a plastic crown, presiding over a paradise rather resembling a Republican-voting suburb, complete with well-kept lawns and prosperous single-family houses.

In the hard-scrabble economy of Ohio today, that dream must seem further off than ever.

But for fervent believers, like Hardin and the other parishioners rehearsing their play about the Israelites' escape from Egypt, there's always hope.

"God heard their constant groaning," an actor declared against a soundtrack of Christian rock.

Then sounding not unlike a modern presidential candidate, one of the women on stage declared: "At the end of the day our deliverance will come and then there will be a new morning."

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/republican-hopefuls-woo-christian-vote-111144659.html

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