Why Some Evangelicals Back Thrice-Wed Gingrich

One of the puzzles of the Republican presidential campaign is Newt Gingrich’s appeal to religious conservatives. The irony is that Gingrich, a Catholic convert who has had three marriages, is outperforming Romney, a lifelong Mormon and family man. In fact, less than a month before the Iowa caucuses, the former speaker of the House has three times the support of evangelicals in that state that Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, does.

Now Romney is trying to mix it up. In an ad airing across Iowa, the former governor of Massachusetts describes himself as a man of “steadiness and constancy.”

“I don’t think you’re going to find somebody who has more of those attributes than I do,” Romney says in a clip from one of his debates. “I’ve been married to the same woman for 25 — excuse me, I’ll get in trouble — for 42 years. I’ve been in the same church my entire life.”
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