It appears that no amount of Texas money - including massive donations by his Texas Sugar daddy, the multi-millionaire Dr. James Leininger and others - can save his candidacy.

So what does a failed candidate resort to? Unadulterated pandering to the Religious Right by bashing gays and lesbians, and questioning whether President Barack Obama is really a Christian and charging the president with declaring a war on Christianity.

In a spot entitled "Strong," Perry says, "I'm not ashamed to admit that I'm a Christian, but you don't need to be in the pew every Sunday to know there's something wrong in this country when gays can serve openly in the military but our kids can't openly celebrate Christmas or pray in school. As president, I'll end Obama's war on religion. And I'll fight against liberal attacks on our religious heritage. Faith made America strong. It can make her strong again."

According to Politico, "The hit on gay rights has become a staple of Perry's faith pitch, after getting a hard push yesterday, but the comment about Obama's `war on religion' will rather easily be read as trying underscore the perception among some voters of the president as `different,' and a reminder of the false assertions that the Christian chief executive is really a Muslim."

Sharon Groves, head of the Human Rights Campaign responded to the Perry ad by saying: "We cannot be in the business of forcing people to choose between who they are, who they love, and their faith. Rick Perry's rhetoric presumes that you can't be Christian and supportive of LGBT people. Yet many Christians see in Jesus's example a call to love and support their LGBT neighbors. Rick Perry is trying to claim religion for political motives, but it won't work. Our faith is too precious to be used as a cynical tool for political ends."

In a piece headlined "Thirty Seconds of Dominionism over Iowa" (http://www.talk2action.org/story/2011/12/7/23297/7132) Talk2Action's Fred Clarkson, pointed out that "It was clever (if sleazy) to compare gays finally having the right to serve openly in the American armed forces, with the matter of organized prayer and official Christmas pageants in the public schools. Children may of course celebrate Christmas and pray as they will as long as it is not disruptive of school itself or interfere with the rights of others. These issues long predate the Obama administration and the federal courts have generally resolved them in favor of respecting the rights of individual conscience of students and staff in the public schools. What is remarkable here is that Perry clearly suggests he would seek to allow, if not require, the public schools to promote Christianity through organized group prayer and religious celebrations."

Clarkson also noted that "Perry also claims that there is a war on religion generally and Christianity in particular being led by president Obama, and that allowing gays to serve openly and equally in the military was a victory for the anti-Christian side. Of course, Perry and his ilk presume that one cannot be religious, even Christian, and also gay. ... In Perry's invocation of `our religious heritage' he is suggesting that he stands for a Christianity that `made America strong.' This is a message that resonates with the Christian nationalist claim that the founders intended American to be a Christian nation, that somehow this intention has been derailed, and that it must be restored."

".... In the 30 seconds of Perry's ad," Clarkson wrote, "we can hear all three defining characteristics of dominionism at work. We hear Perry saying that his particular kind of Christianity is at war with all others and must prevail. We hear him saying that he represents the kind of Christianity held by the Founding Fathers and that he will restore that faith. We hear him saying that the respect for the Constitutional right of individual conscience reflected in Supreme Court decisions regarding religious exercises in the public schools is an attack on his idea of Christianity, the policy ideas that flow from it and that he would fight for them as president."

As expected, rather than condemning Perry for his attacks on gays and the president, Fox News' Todd Starnes -- the host of FOX News & Commentary, heard daily on radio stations -- in an article titled "Rick Perry, Barack Obama and the War On Christianity," maintained that "The evidence of his White House attacking the Christian faith, however, is plentiful."

In an interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer, Perry said that was "very comfortable" with the ad. "My faith is part of me. The values that I learned in my Christian upbringing will affect my governing."

So, did the ad do what Perry had hoped? Did it put him in the spotlight and forge some positivity for the campaign? According to The Atlantic's Alexis Madrigal, the Perry ad went viral on You Tube and was viewed, at the time of Madrigal's writing, 750,000 times. However, the ad had "garnered 3,466 likes and 156,821 dislikes." (See "The Politics of Reddit and Rick Perry's Video Ad Fail" @ http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/12/the-politic s-of-reddit-and-rick-perrys-video-ad-fail/249684/ for more details.)