Dan Gilgoff: December 2007 Archives

Today's Washington Post story about Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney attending services yesterday in their respective churches includes this key line about Huckabee's preacher strategy:

On Friday, three national religious leaders backing Huckabee -- Tim LaHaye, Michael Farris and Rick Scarborough -- convened a conference call with Iowa pastors to urge them to use Sunday's services to drive up participation by Christian voters, who polls suggest favor the former Arkansas governor by comfortable margins.

God-o-Meter realizes this strategy is straight out of the 2004 Bush campaign's playbook, but it is still struck by the brazenness of a presidential campaign openly coordinating directly with preachers. Though the Huckabee campaign will surely claim that it's just trying to increase evangelical turnout--as opposed to urging pastors to promote Huck from the pulpit--God-o-Meter wonders if the IRS will wind up investigating such campaign-preacher strategizing as a violation of its rules against certain kinds of church politicking. Of course, God-o-Meter realizes that such an investigation would come far too late to matter in this election cycle.

Launching a new “Catholics for McCain” group and rolling out new leadership for his “Iowans of Faith for McCain” group last week, broadcasting a television ad about bonding with a prison guard over a cross as a POW, and airing recent ads on Iowa Christian radio, the presidential candidate who famously denounced the Christian Right’s leaders as “agents of intolerance” in his 2000 White House bid is making an 11th-hour appeal for the movement’s support.

Perhaps more than anyone, the person responsible for John McCain’s turnabout is Kansas Senator Sam Brownback, the evangelical-turned-Catholic religious conservative who endorsed McCain shortly after ending his own presidential campaign in October. In recent weeks, Brownback and advisors from his defunct campaign have counseled McCain and his aides about stepping up conservative Christian outreach and have arranged meetings between the campaign and evangelical Christian leaders.

“They are redoubling their efforts,” Brownback said of the McCain camp’s religious outreach effort in an interview on Saturday. “For quite a while, they just didn’t think it was their best zone of opportunity, and then we pushed them a lot and they’ve seen that McCain has a message that resonates in that community.”

“I don’t think they’d been very aggressive on reaching out the faith community… or showing respect for faith and issues of faith,” Brownback added about McCain and his team. “More than anything, he had to show respect for authentic faith, and you’re seeing that now in his language.”

Though McCain has been banking his campaign on a strong finish in New Hampshire, an uptick in support from evangelicals and other religious conservatives could improve his fortunes in early states like Iowa and South Carolina.

Brownback said his own efforts on McCain’s behalf include talking up his candidacy in a conversation with Focus on the Family founder James Dobson, an influential evangelical who has said he won’t support McCain because of the Senator’s opposition to a constitutional amendment banning same sex marriage. Brownback also urged McCain to attend a recent meeting with Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, a conservative Christian advocacy group in Washington, DC.

“He does have a strong record on the life issue and I think I still see him as a very viable candidate who’s making a comeback, working aggressively, and has staked out the right position on the new Iraq surge policy,” Perkins, who had previously been critical of McCain, told Beliefnet this month after meeting with the Arizona Senator. “So if you’re a ‘security voter’ concerned with radical Islam, you have more than just the choice of Rudy Giuliani, with all his baggage on social issues.”

Of the roughly 50 activists comprising the new leadership of the Iowans of Faith for McCain group, nearly half are former Brownback backers. Brownback said the McCain campaign is preparing to announce an endorsement from an influential religious figure this week.

McCain’s 2000 “agents of intolerance” remarks about Moral Majority co-founder Jerry Falwell and then-Christian Broadcasting Network chief Pat Robertson and the Senator's opposition to amending the constitution to ban gay marriage aren’t the only reasons he’s been a thorn in the side of the Christian Right. The movement’s leaders have also decried the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law, which placed limits on the organizations those leaders operate. They also bristled at McCain’s participation in the “Gang of 14” senators that struck a 2005 deal over President George W. Bush’s judicial appointments that wound up averting a dramatic change in Senate rules. Branded “the nuclear option,” conservatives had pushed the rules change to ensure that President Bush’s judicial nominees received Senate floor votes.

“This has been rocky road for John, but there’s been some regrets and some maturing on both sides,” Brownback said. While Christian Right leaders “have been unhappy about him in the past…. they warm up to him when they start to look at the other candidates and check him against the others. They say, ‘I’ve been mad at John in the past but he’s our best candidate.’”

Brownback said his chief arguments for McCain among social conservatives are his strong anti-abortion rights record in the Senate, his electability—ensuring more conservative appointments to the Supreme Court—his foreign policy experience, and his support for the Iraq war. “There has been resistance to John,” Brownback said. “But now it’s time to decide and stick with it.”

The McCain campaign did not respond to requests for comment about its stepped-up religious outreach effort.

Mitt Romney today announced the endorsement of Robert Wolgemuth, an evangelical best-selling author and former chairman of the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association. God-o-Meter wonders how many other evangelical endorsements the Romney camp has in its pocket to announce in the week leading up to the Iowa caucuses--and whether they'll actually sway any evangelical voters. Wolgemuth's statement:

"Governor Romney has demonstrated that he is the one candidate in both parties who can represent the three pillars of the Reagan coalition – a strong military, a strong economy and stronger families. Most importantly, he has laid out a vision for strengthening American families through championing a Federal Marriage Amendment and defending the sanctity of human life. Governor Romney has the experience, vision and personal values to lead our county as we face ongoing and new domestic and global challenges, and I am proud to support his candidacy."

Shortly after announcing its new Catholics for McCain effort yesterday, the McCain campaign unveiled new leadership for its Iowans of Faith for McCain coalition. It's more evidence that McCain is seeking to expand his second wind in New Hampshire on the backs of independent-minded voters into a surge within the GOP's Christian Right base. From the McCain camp's press release:

The Iowans of Faith for McCain coalition brings together people who support pro-life issues, traditional marriage and family values. Its members support John McCain's commitment to pro-life principles, traditional family values and making America a stronger nation. The coalition includes several supporters of former presidential candidate Senator Sam Brownback (R-KS).

"As a pastor and as a former vice president of Iowa Right to Life, I decided to support the candidate most likely to work with Congress to appoint and gain confirmation of strict constructionist judges, ultimately resulting in the reversal of Roe v Wade," said Phil Carroll of Grace Church in Des Moines and Co-Chair of Iowans of Faith for McCain. "That candidate is most assuredly John McCain. This would have been enough for me, but when you add his national security experience, honesty, integrity, and ability to play it straight with the American people, then no other candidate can even come close."

God-o-Meter is trying to find out who's behind the McCain campaign's new Christian outreach offensive (its money is on Sam Brownback) and will report back soon.

Can't-believe-he's-still-running candidate Christopher Dodd stars in a Christian Science Monitor faith and values profile that has him talking more than usual about his Catholicism's influence on his life. Indeed, the influence is so deep that God-o-Meter is surprised he doesn't open up about it more often:

After graduating from a Jesuit prep school outside Washington, Dodd went on to Providence College in Rhode Island, a Catholic school run by Dominican friars. From there, he went on to serve two years in the Peace Corps in the mountains of the Dominican Republic....

"It was my epiphany: I remembered what it was to be an American, to be optimistic and confident even at a time [when] the Vietnam War was raging and we were divided," he says. "There was a sense that we were doing good things for our country and for others."

.... Dodd views himself as a serious and committed Roman Catholic. He calls the church his "spiritual home." But in his 30-plus years in public service, he has never "worn his faith on his sleeve," according to Howard Reiter, a political scientist at the University of Connecticut at Storrs. Dodd is comfortable with the fact that his wife, Ms. Clegg, is a Mormon.

Last spring, at a round table on faith in public life at Boston College, Dodd talked extensively about how his faith "strongly informs" and "guides" his decisionmaking. It taught him "to promote the common good, social justice, and to do everything possible to provide a safety net for the most vulnerable," he says.

Yet he believes strongly in the separation of church and state – but says it shouldn't be a solid, impermeable wall. He describes it as a window through which each side can watch and stay informed about the other.

"It's not a window that you can open, but in your public decisions, there's got to be some reflection [of religious beliefs]. Decisions have to be at least informed by them," he says during an interview. "But if you start getting overly defined by your religious views, then I think you've crossed over the wall."

Dodd favors abortion rights, a stance that has at times made him feel isolated because it puts him at odds with the teachings of the Catholic Church. Yet he's adamant that the difference in opinion will not affect his belief in God.

"I finally had to say, 'Was this my faith or not?' " he says. "If I was going to be driven out of my faith because some priest or monsignor or bishop was issuing press releases about me, then how deep was my faith then? So I got over that problem a long time ago."

God-o-Meter notes that even the Democratic also-rans are refusing to let their church define their faith commitment, as Democratic nominee John Kerry did in 2004.