National Journal : Evangelical Christians were 44% of GOP’s primary electorate in 2008 - Mitt Romney encountered strong resistance from them in 2008, because of being a Mormon - Front Runner Mitt Rommey is threatened by dislike of Evangelicals for him :

.

Obama is attacking Mitt Romney, by praising Romney's Excellent Health Care in Massachusetts,  Shrewd Obama is creating big problems for this Front Runner and for the Republican Party, because Obama makes the Republican Primary more disputed and more contentious, lots of Republican blood. The Republican candidates will be forced to be more extremist, right wing and even racist in order to win the nomination, but that strategy of Racism and Extremism dooms the Republicans in the later General Election for President.

This is the most important paragraph of this article in the "National Journal" :

"So, Huckabee might have helped Romney by siphoning off the voters most skeptical of him—evangelical Christians—into a candidacy that ultimately was unlikely to succeed. Huckabee had the potential, Ayres notes, of denying to any other candidate “the voters Romney will find most difficult to get.” In the same way, Huckabee might have again dominated the Deep South primaries—where Romney faces the biggest hurdles—and thus taken them off the board for any other competitor".

National Journal
Romney’s Evangelical Problem
Challenged: Mitt Romney
Mike Huckabee’s exit from the race makes it more imperative for Mitt Romney to increase his appeal among evangelicals.

By Ronald Brownstein
May 20, 2011


Romney’s Evangelical Problem



Some excerpts :

Romney has encountered two levels of resistance from evangelicals: doubts that he is truly committed to conservative positions on social issues such as abortion, and theological tension over his Mormon religion. That latter problem was especially pronounced in the South, where Southern Baptists and Pentecostals, two groups particularly leery of Mormonism, make up at least two-thirds of Republican evangelicals, notes John C. Green, a political scientist at the University of Akron who is an expert on religion and politics. Class issues compound Romney’s challenge. Polls suggest that his smooth, boardroom manner plays better among college-educated than noncollege Republicans, and in many places evangelicals tilt toward the latter. (See “Populists Versus Managers,” NJ, 12/18/10, p. 16.)

Evangelicals constituted 44 percent of GOP presidential primary voters in 2008.

Romney’s weakness with evangelicals, somewhat counterintuitively, explains why he might have benefited had Huckabee entered the race. In 2008, Huckabee won either a plurality or a majority of evangelicals in 15 of the 29 states with exit polls, including virtually every Southern state. Huckabee’s appeal to Southern evangelicals was so powerful that he won five states in Dixie after his late-January defeat in South Carolina essentially guaranteed that he would not capture the nomination.

But Huckabee showed extremely limited appeal beyond that community. In 15 states last time, he attracted no more than single-digit support among non-evangelical voters. Unless Huckabee could have radically extended his reach in 2012, that profile suggests that he would have had enough of a floor to threaten Romney but probably too low a ceiling to beat him.

...................

Now, those evangelical voters and Southern states are in play again and are a potentially bigger risk to Romney if they support a candidate with a greater chance than Huckabee of incorporating them into a broader coalition. “The reaction of a lot of people is that Huckabee being out is good for Romney,” Green says. “But, strategically, it might create a more serious problem for him.”

Almost all GOP analysts agree that Huckabee’s departure increases the odds that evangelical voters will fragment early on, especially in Iowa, whose caucuses will kick off the Republican race. But if the contest eventually reduces to Romney and one rival—either in the South Carolina primary or immediately after it—Huckabee’s exit increases the possibility that evangelicals will unify against Romney, unless he can expand his appeal with them.

.