At a meeting Tuesday in Denver, about 100 conservative Christian leaders from around the country agreed to unite behind the candidacy of John McCain, a politician they have long distrusted, marking the latest in a string of movements that bode well for McCain's general election prospects among the Republican base.
"Collectively we feel that he will support and advance those moral values that we hold much greater than Obama, who in our view will decimate moral values," said Mat Staver, the chairman of Liberty Counsel, a legal advocacy group, who previously supported Mike Huckabee's candidacy.
"There are people who came through the primary with very mixed emotions of the candidate," Staver continued, noting that many in the group had been in Denver to attend a separate meeting for pastors. "This event was to put those aside."
The group included leaders like Phyllis Schlafly, the long-time leader of Eagle Forum; Steve Strang, the publisher of Charisma magazine; Phil Burress, a prominent Ohio marriage and anti-pornography activist; David Barton, the founder of WallBuilders and Donald Hodel, a former secretary of the Interior, who previously served on the board of Focus on the Family. Jim Dobson, the head of Focus and an outspoken critic of McCain, did not attend. The McCain campaign was also not directly represented at the meeting.
A second person who attended the event, but asked not to be named, said that the group was motivated principally by a desire to defeat Barack Obama. "None of these people want to meet their maker knowing that they didn't do everything they could to keep Barack Obama from being president," the participant said. "You've got these two people running for president. One of them is going to become president. That's the perspective. That that's the whole discussion."
I seriously wonder if the right-wing evangelical leaders are starting to worry about the Obama campaign's courting their own evangelical members. According to this July 1, 2008 New York Times article, titled Obama Courting Evangelicals Once Loyal to Bush:
WASHINGTON — Politically speaking, Susan Speakman is a different kind of evangelical.
Mrs. Speakman, 59, a pastor and educator at Bethany Presbyterian Church in Bridgeville, Pa., an activist evangelical church southwest of Pittsburgh, backs Senator Barack Obama in the presidential race. Along with her 23-year-old son, Stephen, she supports Mr. Obama because of his stands on the Iraq war and matters of social justice. The two of them plan to spread the word in their community and beyond.
“What caught my attention early on was his comment that we don’t want red states and blue states, but we want to find reconciliation and rapprochement with folks,” said Mrs. Speakman, who changed her party affiliation to Democratic from Republican this year to vote for Mr. Obama in the Pennsylvania primary. “I really object to the other approach — divide and conquer, isolate and demonize the opposition. I try to engage the other side and try to find ways we can bring the values of the kingdom of God into the experience of humanity.”
Mrs. Speakman is one of thousands of evangelical Christians and so-called faith voters whom the Obama campaign is recruiting in a major effort to connect with a part of the electorate that accounts for an estimated quarter of the voting population and helped elect George W. Bush president twice.
Mr. Obama and his advisers are seeking support not only among relatively moderate evangelicals like Mrs. Speakman, who voted for Mr. Bush in 2000 but backed Senator John Kerry, a Democrat, in 2004 because of her opposition to the war. They are also trying to take advantage of signs that some conservative Christians are rethinking their politics, urged along by a new generation of leadership and intensified concern about issues including climate change, genocide, AIDS and poverty.
Between now and November, the Obama forces are planning as many as 1,000 house parties and dozens of Christian rock concerts, gatherings of religious leaders, campus visits and telephone conference calls to bring together voters of all ages motivated by their faith to engage in politics. It is the most intensive effort yet by a Democratic candidate to reach out to self-identified evangelical or born-again Christians and to try to pry them away from their historical attachment to the Republican Party.
The hard-core conservative evangelicals will certainly never vote for Obama in November. But a segment of moderate evangelicals that opposes President Bush's war in Iraq, and perhaps disapproves of Bush's job performance are certainly a segment for the Obama campaign to court votes on. According to the NY Times story, the Obama campaign is trying to court just enough evangelical votes in the key battleground states who are disillusioned over the Bush war in Iraq, global warming, or the economy. These are the evangelicals who supported President Bush in these battleground states by substantial margins in the 2000 and 2004 elections. What is even more interesting is that the Obama campaign may be targeting these evangelicals over the pocketbook and foreign policy issues of poverty, unemployment, inequality, the environment, and the Iraq war, rather than the standard social issues of gay rights, abortion, marriage, flag burning, school prayer, or intelligent design that have been the standard hot-button issues the Republican Party trots out for soliciting the evangelical vote. And some moderate evangelicals are listening to the Obama campaign pitch.
While over on the McCain campaign, evangelicals have been somewhat cool over Republican candidate John McCain's pitch to the movement. Focus on the Family's James Dobson has refused to support, or vote for, McCain. Evangelicals have remained wary of John McCain, even as the McCain campaign continually courts their votes. There have also been problems with the McCain endorsements of both prominent evangelical leaders, Reverends John Hagee and Rod Parsley, once controversial statements from both pastors came to light, forcing McCain to reject both endorsements. So there is a love/hate relationship between John McCain and the evangelicals. The evangelicals do not see McCain as one of their own, and John McCain's only interest in the evangelicals is pandering for their votes. And yet both McCain and the evangelicals need each other in this shotgun wedding for 2008. Hence, this sudden rally-around-the-McCain-campaign-boys meeting by these top evangelical leaders, even as both McCain and the evangelicals may not like each other. But now suddenly, they must tolerate each other.
Finally, there is this one interesting quote from the NY Times article by the one unnamed individual attending the event:
"None of these people want to meet their maker knowing that they didn't do everything they could to keep Barack Obama from being president," the participant said. "You've got these two people running for president. One of them is going to become president. That's the perspective. That that's the whole discussion."
You want to talk about crazy, this quote just shows how insane some of these evangelical leaders can be. So if these evangelical leaders fail to do everything they can in stopping Barack Obama from becoming president, then God will send them to Hell? So now the insane evangelical leaders are embarking on this religious crusade for opposing Obama by rallying around McCain--can't allow this latest Antichrist Democrat to be elected president.
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