DAVID GREENE, HOST:
On a ranch in Texas today, more than 150 religious conservatives plan to gather. Their mission: to unite behind a Republican candidate who is not Mitt Romney. As NPR's Barbara Bradley Hagerty reports, this meeting might be too little, too late.
BARBARA BRADLEY HAGERTY, BYLINE: At a recent town hall meeting in New Hampshire, Rick Santorum told about a man who challenged the Republican candidate on his overt religiosity.
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HAGERTY: Santorum, a Catholic, wants to claim that mantle. So does Newt Gingrich, also a Catholic; and Rick Perry, an evangelical. And yet none of them has won the hearts of conservative leaders, says Bryan Fischer, director of issue analysis at the American Family Association.
BRYAN FISCHER: Well, there is no perfect candidate. Jesus Christ is not on the ballot in any of the primary elections. So that means social conservatives have to do triage.
HAGERTY: To perform the triage, dozens of conservative leaders are attending a so-called emergency meeting at a ranch in Texas. Among the bigger names: Tony Perkins, of Family Research Council; Gary Bauer, a former presidential candidate; and James Dobson, who used to head Focus on the Family.
The idea is to try to unite behind one, true-blue religious conservative. Bryan Fischer says evangelicals are desperate to defeat Barack Obama. But he does not believe that Romney - whom they distrust on issues such as abortion and same-sex marriage - can generate the passion to do that.
FISCHER: If Romney gets the nomination, his support is going to be tepid, lukewarm - maybe even nonexistent.
HAGERTY: It probably won't be that bad, says Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention. Polls suggest that given the choice between Governor Romney and President Obama, nine out of 10 evangelicals would vote for Romney. Still, Land says...
RICHARD LAND: Before we marry the guy next door, don't you think we ought to have a fling with a tall, dark stranger and see if he can be - if he can support us in the manner to which we'd like to be accustomed? And if he can't, we can always marry the steady beau who lives next door.
HAGERTY: If evangelical leaders fail to unite behind what they see as a staunch religious conservative, Bryan Fischer says, they'll make the same, quote, mistake they made four years ago.
FISCHER: I do think some social conservatives are doing some 20-20 hindsight analysis of what happened in 2008, realizing that they had a social conservative candidate to back in Mike Huckabee. They didn't coalesce around him, and that provided a path for John McCain - who was not a fighter on our issues - to win the nomination.
HAGERTY: So tonight, surrogates for each candidate will come before the crowd and make a case for their guy. Tomorrow morning, the group will discuss whom to coronate. Richard Land notes that each of the serious contenders has flaws. Gingrich has his multiple marriages and ethical violations. Perry has his gaffes and his oops moment. Santorum has little money to run a national campaign. Complicating the matter, Land says, is that many of the leaders are already backing a candidate.
LAND: And what they're saying is, I think it's great; we need to be united behind a social conservative. But I can't really do that until my guy's out of the race.
HAGERTY: Others say the Texas gathering may be less-than-meets-the-eye in another way. These so-called elites just don't wield the power they used to.
ROBERT JONES: Gone are the days of the king-makers that can sit in a room and decide who the evangelical candidate is.
HAGERTY: Robert Jones heads Public Religion Research Institute. He says organizations that so influenced Republican politics during the 1980s and '90s, now sit on the sidelines.
JONES: Focus on the Family has laid off hundreds and hundreds of people. The Moral Majority is no more. The Christian Coalition is no more. So these kind of groups that really were able to translate these decisions made in kind of closed rooms by a group of men deciding who was going to be the next candidate, really just don't exist in the way that they did.
HAGERTY: Bryan Fischer may not buy that analysis, but he does think the Texas meeting will end in a draw.
FISCHER: They're going to come away and say well, look. We're not going to be able to come together and unite behind one candidate. So this is really going to be an issue that voters in South Carolina and Florida are going to have to decide for us.
HAGERTY: And by then, it may be too late for anyone but Romney.
Barbara Bradley Hagerty, NPR News.