According to recent polling by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press (conducted April 4-15, 2012), Romney holds a 53-point lead over Obama among white evangelicals (favoring him by a 73 to 20 percent margin) and a 20-point lead among white Catholics, who favor Romney by 57 to 37 percent.

So while there may have been some mega-hand wringing during the primaries, a fair amount of Mormon-bashing, and threats from some Christian Right leaders to sit this one out, there really hasn't been a scintilla of doubt that in the end conservative Christian evangelicals would vote overwhelmingly for Mitt Romney.

"It's pretty obvious that the Religious Right wanted Rick Santorum to be the GOP's candidate, but now that it's clear he won't be, I expect most of them to fall in line and back Romney," Rob Boston, Senior Policy Analyst for Americans United, told BuzzFlash. "Romney can count on the Religious Right's overarching hatred of Obama to drive them to the polls. There may be a tiny faction who won't vote for a Mormon, but I don't believe they will amount to much."

Since the beginning of the GOP's primary season, Romney, fully recognizing the far right playing field, has been pandering to conservative evangelicals. And it seems he will continue to do so, recently agreeing to give the May 12 commencement address at the late Rev. Jerry Falwell's Liberty University - now run by Jerry Falwell Jr. The university bills itself as the world's largest Christian university and has 12,500 students on its Lynchburg, Virginia campus and more than 70,000 enrolled in its online programs.

An interesting info-morsel about Liberty University is that its survival is in part due to the vast amount of taxpayer money it is receiving. Last year, I reported that "Liberty University has raked in so much taxpayer money from the federal government that is now ranked among the top ten universities in the United States receiving federal dollars. It is also Virginia's top recipient of federal money." There is no doubt that sign up sheets will be circulating as the Romney campaign tries to enlist Liberty University student as volunteers for his campaign.

Evangelicals endorse Mormon Mitt

In January, Dr. Darrell Bock of the Dallas Theological Seminary told Dallas' CBS 11 that while "it will be a hard choice between their religious convictions and their political ideology .... I think in the end, political ideology will win out for a lot of people."

Christianity Today reported that Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, "told NPR that evangelical voters would support Romney, particularly when the opponent is President Obama. `I think that people have to understand that being for Rick Santorum does not necessarily mean you're anti-Romney,' Land said. `And against Barack Obama, it will not be very difficult at all for Mr. Romney to garner the support of both the evangelicals, unless he were to do something catastrophic, like pick a pro-choice running mate, which I don't think he's going to do.'"

Even Dallas-based pastor Dr. Robert Jefress - who when introducing Rick Perry at the Values Voter Summit publicly called Mormonism a cult --  has come out and endorsed Romney. "Given the choice between a Christian like Barack Obama who embraces very unbiblical principles like abortion and a Mormon like Mitt Romney who supports biblical values like the sanctity of life and marriage, I think there's a good biblical case for voting for Mitt Romney," Jefress said.

"Sometimes voting for a candidate is voting for the lesser of two evils," Jefress said. "It's like my friend Janet Marshall says, `Jesus isn't on the ballot this year, so we have to make choices.'"

Gary Bauer, president of American Values, was one of Rick Santorum's staunchest supporters. Now, he too has hopped aboard Team Romney's wagon train. Bauer told the New York Times that "Going to the general election, I will do everything I can for Governor Romney. But his campaign has got to make it easy for me to help them, and not make it hard by being tempted to pull back on conservative issues."  

In this regard, evangelicals are confident that Romney will look to the right for his vice-presidential running mate, and that he will not Etch-A-Sketch his way back towards the center as has been tradition with GOP presidential candidates.

"There are several things Romney can do to nail down the Religious Right," Rob Boston explained. "These include seeking endorsements from movement leaders, appearing at conferences like the Family Research Council's Values Voter Summit, highlighting the social issues that the Religious Right obsesses over, promising to put conservative evangelicals in his cabinet or in high government positions and vowing to impose a social issues litmus test on federal judicial appointments."

In addition, suggested Boston, Romney might "pull a Palin" out of his hat, by "nam[ing] a vice presidential candidate who excites the Religious Right."

On Sean Hannity's Fox News Channel's program, conservative columnist Michelle Malkin urged Romney to get tougher with President Obama. "I hate hearing" Mitt Romney calling Obama "a nice guy" Malkin said. "He's gotta get this talking point out of his mouth."

Mark DeMoss, an evangelical publicist and a senior advisor to the Romney campaign, told the Huffington Post that he was optimistic that things are coming together nicely behind Mitt Romney and could do so fairly quickly,"

Romney will get conservative evangelical votes, but will he inspire grassroots Christians to work for him during the election? "Mitt Romney will win the support of evangelicals and conservatives because his opponent is Barack Obama. But he needs the grassroots enthusiasm of activists who are for him, not just against Obama," said Ralph Reed, the former executive director of the Christian Coalition whose electoral ambitions were thwarted by his close working relationship with Republican Party uber-lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

While he definitely needs the Christian conservative vote, will Romney really need the traditional its grassroots army to knock on doors and make those get-out-the-vote phone calls?

Perhaps not so much.

Picture this: Come August, cities and towns across the state of Utah begin to resemble ghost towns, as armies of Mormons spread out across the swing states to work for Romney.