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January 06, 2012 10:08 AM Newt Gingrich, Liberty Man

By Daniel Luzer

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s poll numbers are falling, fast. Gingrich doesn’t have much money left to buy new political advertisements. But there’s still a new Gingrich commercial out, sort of.

It wasn’t generated by the Gingrich campaign, however. The advertisement appears to be an admissions video of the Virginia evangelical college Liberty University:

While the above perhaps has some potential to help Newt Gingrich (though the school is located in Virginia, a state where he’s not even on the ballot) it’s not all that likely the advertisement will help Liberty much.

Gingrich has long has an uneasy relationship with evangelical Christians. While he’s eager to talk about his own religious experience and harp on the importance of promoting religious freedom, he doesn’t enjoy the religious right’s backing like some of his rivals. Plus there’s that messy personal life.

Liberty is an evangelical Christian college founded by the Southern Baptist televangelist Jerry Falwell. Gingrich used to be a Southern Baptist. But he left the church when he divorced his second wife. He converted to Catholicism shortly before he married his third wife in 2000.

Daniel Luzer is the web editor of the Washington Monthly. Follow him on Twitter at @Daniel_Luzer.