Romney finds support among South Carolina evangelicals

GREENVILLE, S.C. — Mitt Romney's presidential campaign has been embraced in a most unlikely place: at Bob Jones University, the influential Christian college that teaches that the LDS Church is a cult.

In early voting South Carolina, Romney has picked up support among the evangelicals and social conservatives who are a political force.

Last week, Romney won the endorsements of Bob Jones III and Robert Taylor, the founder's grandson and a top dean, respectively here at Bob Jones University.

He also gained the backing of Don Wilton, the immediate past president of the South Carolina Baptist Convention and pastor of a nearby megachurch, as well as Dr. John Willke, a founder and past president of the National Right to Life Committee.

During the same one-week period, the former Massachusetts governor eked out a win in a straw poll at the socially conservative Values Voter Summit in Washington.

Taken together, the endorsements and straw poll victory show that while evangelicals may not agree with the tenets of his LDS faith or even the standing of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as a Christian faith, some have decided to heed Romney's request for support.

They are looking at his apple-cheeked family and clean-living lifestyle and finding comfort in his pledge to support their social philosophy should he become president.

That's an achievement for a candidate who embraced abortion rights as recently as November 2004. He now says he has changed his mind and wants to overturn the Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion.

"It's hard to see, but I think that they just realized that he's the best of a bad lot. I hate to say it that way," said Dave Woodard, a longtime GOP activist and political science professor at Clemson University.

Romney's standing is hardly secure.

Wilton retracted his endorsement Tuesday, saying he never intended for word of his support for Romney to become national news. "It was my personal error to agree to support Romney's campaign," the pastor said in a statement. "Until this incident I had never endorsed any person running for any elected office, Democrat or Republican."

Woodard, meanwhile, expects that former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson, a fellow Southerner, will win the Jan. 19 GOP primary in South Carolina. Thompson, though, has not campaigned here since his announcement tour, nor has he paid a $35,000 fee to appear on the primary ballot. He is expected to do so Wednesday when he returns for his first campaign appearance in more than a month.