This morning — Jon Huntsman is leaving the race; Gingrich, Santorum and Perry all battle for conservative votes; evangelical leaders move to coalesce around Santorum; and PACs help flood the South Carolina airwaves with negative ads.

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Huntsman Dropping Out

Just hours after receiving a key newspaper endorsement in South Carolina, second-tier candidate Jon Huntsman decided to withdrawal from the Republican presidential race. Campaign aides told The Hill that he’ll endorse once and current frontrunner Mitt Romney at an 11 a.m. event in Myrtle Beach.

Politico has more on Huntsman’s exit from the race:

Huntsman’s exit comes less than a week after he claimed victory from his third-place finish in the New Hampshire primary, the contest he’d staked his candidacy on ever since entering the race last summer. Huntsman experienced a surge of support in the closing days before that vote, but he still fell well short of Ron Paul — and even further behind Romney, whom he’d sniped at in the closing days. A source said that Huntsman’s rationale for now backing Romney, who he has criticized for weeks on the campaign trail as lacking a “core,” is that he didn’t want to block the person best prepared in the field to beat Obama, and then to lead the country and grapple with the economy. “Jon Huntsman is proud of the campaign he ran and the message of restoring trust in Washington,” said a campaign official familiar with his thinking. “He didn’t want to stand in the way of the candidate most likely to beat Barack Obama and turn the economy around. That’s Mitt Romney.”

BuzzFeed’s Zeke Miller reported on Friday that Huntsman aides were looking for the exits, shocked that Huntsman didn’t drop out of the race after his disappointing third place finish:

One top volunteer told BuzzFeed that he was shocked Huntsman didn’t drop out on Tuesday. “I was hoping he would. I don’t want to be disloyal or anything, but he doesn’t have a chance anymore. Once he quits, then I can go work for a winning campaign.” A current staffer echoed those sentiments, saying Huntsman should have gotten out after New Hampshire to allow those who’ve worked for him to find another job. “We’re not going to quit, but we don’t really want to keep going either.”

– The Atlantic’s James Fallows writes that Huntsman leaves the race with his dignity intact and well positioned to make another go of it in 2016.

Anyways, Jon Huntsman will probably say all sorts of terribly nice things about Mitt Romney at that endorsement event later this morning. If you’re getting bored and want to have a little fun, here’s Huntsman’s Meet The Press appearance where he wasn’t so nice to Romney.

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Christian Conservatives Endorse

Key conservative/evangelical Christian leaders met in Texas this past weekend and declared they were backing Rick Santorum for the GOP nomination, in a bid to get a block of voters that typically has considerable sway in Republican primaries to coalesce around a candidate.

Religious conservatives have been highly suspicious of Mitt Romney because of his shifting views on social issues like abortion and gay marriage and have been trying to unite behind a candidate to slow his run. The fracturing of the evangelical voting block allowed Mitt Romney to win in Iowa and could allow him to repeat in South Carolina.

The Dallas Morning News’ Wayne Slater reports:

About 150 religious and conservative leaders attended the two-day session that settled on Santorum after passionate discussion and three ballots. Surrogates for all the Republican challengers except Jon Huntsman made pitches for their candidates, and the field was quickly narrowed to Rick Perry , Newt Gingrich and Santorum. Perry failed to make the second ballot, and Santorum emerged as the consensus choice with 85 of 114 votes on the third ballot. Perkins acknowledged that while Perry has a strong social conservative agenda, a pair of botched debates has left many doubting that he could win. Although Gingrich had what Perkins called “passionate supporters,” one participant said the former House speaker “doesn’t just have baggage, he has freight” — a reference to Gingrich’s three marriages and ethical lapses in Congress.

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Becoming the Anti-Romney

With three anti-Romney’s remaining in the battle for the Republican presidential nomination, Rick Perry, Newt Gingrich and Santorum spent the weekend trying to rally the social conservatives to their side. The Washington Post’s Phillip Rucker reports:

But that is precisely what is happening in South Carolina, with less than a week until Republicans here head to the polls. The four candidates, along with Rep. Ron Paul (Tex.) and former Utah governor Jon Huntsman Jr., are planning to campaign heavily before the first-in-the-South primary, including nationally televised debates Monday night on Fox News and Thursday night on CNN. Two unaligned South Carolina Republicans, Sen. Lindsey O. Graham and Rep. Tim Scott, said Sunday that if Romney goes 3 for 0 in Saturday’s primary, the nominating contest effectively will be over. “If for some reason he is not derailed here and Mitt Romney wins South Carolina — no one has ever won all three — I think it should be over . . . and I hope the party would rally around him,” Graham said on “Meet the Press.”

The New York Times’ Michael Shear adds:

Mr. Gingrich disputed Mr. Santorum’s claim of overwhelming support among evangelicals, saying on NBC’s “Meet the Press” program that he remained a favorite among “Christian conservatives and social conservatives” in South Carolina. “I think that report was very highly exaggerated,” he said of the vote from the Texas evangelical gathering. “There was a very strong Santorum group and there was a very strong Gingrich group.”

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The Clips

– The New York Times reports on the SuperPAC ads that are flooding the airwaves in South Carolina.

– Politico reports that Rick Perry called the Bain attacks aimed at Mitt Romney fair game. Last week, Perry backed away from the critique after he came under fire from the conservative establishment.

– The Associated Press reports that Perry attacked the White House “disdain” for the military because the Pentagon is considering pressing charges against Marines who taped themselves urinating on a dead body in Afghanistan.