As South Carolina Republicans headed to the polls Saturday, an all too-simple storyline emerged in the press. Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, a Southern Baptist minister who won the Iowa caucus, would have the evangelical vote, while Arizona Senator John McCain, a Vietnam War hero, would win defense conservatives. "It's the Christian soldiers vs. the retired soldiers," one observer summed up for the Wall Street Journal.
But McCain captured a quarter of evangelical voters when he won yesterday's GOP primary according to exit polls, while Huckabee won only 40%. A recent conversation with Rich Cizik, who heads up governmental affairs for the 30-million member National Association of Evangelicals, reveals that Christian voters are a more complicated voting block than the media seems to realize. Cizik speaks unhappily about the GOP under the Bush administration. "This has been an unholy alliance in which the evangelicals have given everything and gotten nothing in return." But, he says, "It's quite obvious that the next Republican in the White House will likely be someone with a very different attitude... John McCain or Mike Huckabee, at least in the case of those two, would be much more sympathetic." (Cizik was speaking for himself, not for the NAE, which does not endorse candidates.)
Cizik's favorable disposition to Huckabee's campaign is expected. Huckabee is widely regarded as the evangelicals' greatest hope in 2008. But his view of John McCain may come as something of a surprise. McCain is regarded as having dealt his 2000 campaign a deathblow a week after George W. Bush defeated him in a dirty South Carolina primary when he blasted Bush supporters on the Religious Right in a Virginia Beach speech. He condemned Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson as "agents of intolerance" in the political campaign, and expressed disdain for their opposition to his signature issue, campaign finance reform. "I don't pander to them, because I don't ascribe to their failed philosophy that money is our message. I believe in the cause of conservative reform." Though not all evangelicals agree with Falwell and Robertson, McCain's attack on the movement's high profile leaders is believed to have ended any remaining hope that he could win over the key GOP constituency.
Looking towards 2008, McCain went to great lengths to repair relationships with the Christian leaders he had scorned in 2000. He met with Falwell in his Senate office and spoke at the graduation of the school Falwell founded, Liberty University. As the campaign heated up in the fall of '07, he made a comment to Beliefnet that many greeted as bald-faced pandering. "I just have to say in all candor that since this nation was founded primarily on Christian principles... personally, I prefer someone who I know who has a solid grounding in my faith."
Cizik's openness to McCain explains why evangelical voters are more receptive than conventional wisdom would dictate. Now, Cizik is a different breed of evangelical leader than Falwell and Robertson. Indeed, he has weathered calls for his ouster by leading "family values" conservatives because he has championed a broader agenda that includes traditionally "liberal" issues like climate change. But if that issue is any indication, Cizik's far more in sync with evangelical voters, 84% of whom favor global warming legislation. (Falwell, on the other hand, denounced global warming advocacy as "Satan's attempt to redirect the church's primary focus" shortly before his death last spring.)
On a host of issues I happen to agree with him," Cizik says of McCain, beginning with the issues that have most antagonized conservative activists. "I agree with him on campaign finance reform. I agree with him on immigration." Cizik continues, "I agree with him on climate and the environment. I agree with him on Iraq, where he's disagreed with the Bush administration [about the need for more troops]. I agree with him on [opposing additional] federal spending and earmarks and all these things. I agree with McCain on the sanctity of human life.
The truth is, the evangelical movement is not homogeneous, but divided on many key issues. While evangelical leaders have long railed against campaign finance reform because it curtailed their ability to influence elections, even Christian voters supporting Huckabee before he won Iowa expressed outrage with the big money that influences the Republican party. Immigration, similarly, splits the evangelical family. Though roughly two-thirds of white evangelicals tell pollsters they regard immigrants as a burden on society, some evangelical groups have come out in support of immigration reform or avoided the issue because of a lack of consensus.
Voters in both Iowa and New Hampshire -- and, now South Carolina -- responded to candidates who positioned themselves as outsiders. Christians want that change as much as any other rank-and-file GOP voter. While Huckabee's Christian roots gives him a leg up among evangelicals, Cizik's comments suggest why McCain can compete for these votes despite his complicated history with the evangelical leadership. "I just think McCain has been a solid leader and a maverick and an innovator," Cizik says.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhKyD7kKlJg
http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=36480§ionid=3510203
There has never been another administration that pandered so much to right wing christian evangelicals. There has never been another administration who held monthly (at least) meetings IN THE WHITE HOUSE for several powerful/influential evangelical leaders with the president and other high ups (I doubt they were having a prayer circle). There has never been another administration that so catered to evangelical whims re: faith-based initiatives (taxpayer dollars for religious programs), promoting evangelical education (teaching creationsim as science), promoting evangelical sex education (NO sex education disguised as worthless abstinance only preaching), and installing evangelically activist judges (intending to overturn roe v wade, rolling back civil rights for minorities, etc)...
Never have I seen such an evangelical religious administration! I sure as hell didn't have any personal representatives meeting with the president every month, I know that.
You'd almost think Jesus was running this country, the way these guys have been pandering to the religious right.
Hmmm. Come to think of it, not only have I never seen an administration so innundated with evangelicalism and holier-than-thou piousness, I've also never seen an administration so corrupt, dishonest, and morally bankrupt as this one either.
Coinkydink? I think not.
McCain, of course, will pander to whomever he needs for the Vote. If he gets into office, he'll have trouble figuring out which way to point his beak - this christian or that one? Who's got more dough?
Evangelicals, by definition, are supposedly just spreading the word of their god - zealously and militantly (M-W online). But what happens when they find out that each of them may have a slightly different view of what their god's word is? Hello, Northern Ireland. Hello, Shia and Sunni. Both are stupid wars that went on (or are going on still) because of ever-so-slightly different interpretations of the Word.
Don't trust any of them - trust YOUR Higher Power that you'll end up being despised because of YOUR beliefs, regardless of what they are.
Clinton lied, committed adultery. The Bushes lied, and showed no compassion or understanding.
As to McCain, hey, if you can believe the Earth is only a few thousand years old, why not believe we're winning in Iraq?