The American Spectator

has been using opposition research provided by the Romney campaign, as well as accepting funds from donors steered to the site by the Romney camp. The site does not accept funds directly from the Romney campaign. /p>

Romney has been attempting to build up his credentials among evangelicals for almost two years, particularly since early focus grouping and polling in the South and elsewhere revealed that many evangelicals have a deep distrust of the Mormon faith.

Evangelicals for Mitt appears to be the result of the early efforts of Mark DeMoss, who operates a public relations company out of Atlanta. It was DeMoss who initially approached Romney, and who brought together many of the leaders of the evangelical movement in a meeting with Romney in Boston. From there, a number of evangelical groups began outreach with Romney. DeMoss has no direct ties to the website.

Today, the Evangelicals for Mitt operation has spent its time attacking conservative Republican presidential candidates, most recently former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and unannounced candidate, former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson.

Thompson, who has made it clear that he does not support Roe v. Wade, and who was certified as pro-life by the National Right to Life Committee back in 1994, has continued to state that he is pro-life. But the Evangelicals for Mitt, using research provided by the Romney campaign, has been putting out information on its blog that Thompson, as well as other Republican Senate candidates, were not.

“That’s simply not the case,” says a Tennessee state Republican Party official. “Anyone who says that men like Thompson and [Bill] Frist weren’t opposed to Roe v. Wade wasn’t paying attention or just didn’t care.”

The Romney campaign has targeted Thompson as a serious threat to its ongoing political survival. Recent polls that have just begun including Thompson in surveys show him running ahead of Romney in Iowa, without his having spent a dime.

On Saturday afternoon, Thompson showed further strength by winning the Gwinnett County, Georgia Republican straw poll, receiving more votes than all the other candidates combined.

p> STRANGE MARKET br> Apparently the sad story of Elizabeth Edwards ‘s cancer comes with a higher price not only for the Edwards family, but also for John Edwards