GOP Candidates Vie for Iowa Edge

DES MOINES, Iowa – Evangelical activists are sharply divided just 10 weeks before Iowa's leadoff presidential caucuses, and a half-dozen Republican contenders hoped to gain an edge with the state's most potent conservative voting bloc.

The candidates, including businessman Herman Cain, sought Saturday to sharpen their Christian conservative credentials, and at times allay doubts, among this influential group before the state's Jan. 3 caucuses, which officially open the Republican nominating process.

Iowa voters have yet to rally around any single candidate and aggressively court them, seeking the kind of lift that carried former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee to victory in the leadoff caucuses in 2008.

Influential pastors in the state say their network of politically active clergy is divided. Likewise, Christian home-school activists, a well-networked group that worked behind the scenes for Huckabee, apparently have no preferred candidate.

Activists attending a forum at the Iowa State Fairgrounds weighed pitches from former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, Rep. Michele Bachmann and Texas Gov. Rick Perry as well as Cain, former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Texas Rep. Ron Paul.

The forum didn't draw Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor who has led national Republican polls all year and was in New Hampshire on Saturday. He declined an invitation, in part because he is well-known in Iowa from his 2008 White House run and is skipping multicandidate gatherings in the state.

Romney has had a touchy relationship with evangelical conservatives, many of whom are leery of his Mormon faith and his changed positions on social issues such as gay and abortion rights. He has attended national meetings of conservatives, including the Values Voter Summit in Washington this month, but is emphasizing economic, rather than social issues.

Cain sought to clarify his position on abortion after suggesting this week the issue was a matter of choice. He declared before roughly 1,000 devout Iowa social conservatives at the Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition that he believed human life began "from conception. No abortions. No exceptions."

Cain has risen sharply in the polls recently, stirring the interest of conservative, anti-tax tea party activists and Republicans drawn to the former Godfather's Pizza CEO's business background and outsider status.

Perry took a veiled jab at Romney, who had supported abortion rights but declared his opposition during his term as Massachusetts governor as he was weighing a presidential bid.

"Pro-life is not a matter of campaign convenience," said Perry, who has stepped up his attacks on Romney's conservative profile.

Bachmann, who won the Iowa Republican straw poll in August with help from Iowa's politically active network of evangelical pastors, proclaimed her support for a constitutional amendment making abortion illegal.