Why some candidatesare bending their beliefs

 America:  While Democratic presidential frontrunners Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama vied this week for support in Hollywood, the contest among Republicans focused on one of the party's most powerful blocs of primary voters - Christian conservatives.

John McCain, who in 2000 described televangelists Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson as "agents of intolerance", started the week with a private meeting with religious broadcasters in Florida and gave the keynote speech yesterday at a lunch in Seattle co-hosted by the Discovery Institute, which promotes "intelligent design" - a version of creationism.

Opposition from conservative Christians, who accounted for one third of Republican primary voters in South Carolina, one of the first states to vote in the nomination process, may have cost McCain the nomination in 2000. The Christian right remains suspicious of the Arizona senator, whose position on issues such as abortion rights has shifted a number of times over the past decade.

McCain said last week that Roe v Wade, the 1972 supreme court ruling that guaranteed the right to legal abortion throughout the US, should be overturned. In 1999, however, he told the San Francisco Chronicle: "I'd love to see a point where it is irrelevant and could be repealed because abortion is no longer necessary... But certainly in the short term, or even the long term, I would not support repeal of Roe v Wade, which would then force X number of women in America to illegal and dangerous operations." Asked the following year what he would do if his daughter became pregnant, McCain replied: "The final decision would be made by Meghan with our advice and counsel."

McCain's attitude to so-called intelligent design has been ambiguous too, arguing in 2005 that it should be taught in schools along with Darwinism.

"I think that there has to be all points of view presented. But they've got to be thoroughly presented. So to say that you can only teach one line of thinking... or one belief on how people and the world was created, I think there's nothing wrong with teaching different schools of thought," he told the Arizona Star. The following year, he said that intelligent design should "probably not" be taught in schools.

McCain has made peace with Falwell, at whose Liberty University he made a commencement address last year and the senator now says he no longer regards the evangelist as an agent of intolerance.

McCain's wooing of the religious right is matched in fervour by that of former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, who last month launched his campaign for the Republican nomination by declaring: "I believe in God, and I believe that every person in this great country and every person on this great planet is a child of God."

This week, Mr Romney told a gathering of Republican women in South Carolina that he holds a traditional view of marriage. "First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes the baby in the baby carriage... Every child in America deserves a mom and a dad. We've got to have marriage before we have babies if we're going to have parental involvement in our schools."

Romney is struggling to persuade Christian conservative of his bone fides, however, partly because he is a Mormon - which some evangelicals see as not properly Christian. More importantly, Romney's current opposition to abortion and gay rights follow years during which he told Massachusetts voters that he was liberal on both issues - even claiming to be a stronger advocate of gay rights than Senator Edward Kennedy.

Even Rudy Giuliani, who favours abortion rights and gay civil unions, has been courting evangelical voters, promising to appoint supreme court justices who are "strict constructionists" - code for opponents of Roe v Wade.

Although Giuliani has agreed to speak at Robertson's Regent University in April, the former New York mayor has not changed his position on abortion and gay rights.

Giuliani's approach could prove effective with Christian conservatives, who are politically sophisticated and hard-headed when it comes to achieving their objectives. Few appear to be impressed by McCain and Romney's sudden conversions and if Giuliani starts to look like a winner, Christian leaders may be willing to support him, just as they backed the equally sceptical George Bush in return for commitments on judicial appointments and key cabinet posts.