It’s hard to overstate the extent to which the religious-right movement and its leaders have not gotten along with John McCain. It’s not just that they preferred other candidates during the Republican primaries; it’s that they actively and publicly hated the guy.
Consider an example. In October, the Family Research Council hosted a “Values Voter Summit,” and nearly all Republican candidates showed up to kiss the movement’s ring, touting their faith and their commitment to religious-right issues. At the end of the conference, organizers held a straw poll — and McCain came in dead last with just 1.4 percent support. McCain did even worse than Rudy Giuliani, who supports abortion rights and gay rights.
The whole “agents of intolerance” thing was apparently tough to get over. It’s hard for a candidate to “Sister Souljah” conservative evangelical activists, and then seek their support two cycles later. The religious right may be crazy, but it’s a movement with a long memory.
That, however, was before Barack Obama won the Democratic nomination, and started earning enough support to possibly split the evangelical vote. All of a sudden, McCain doesn’t look so bad anymore.
Conservative evangelical leaders met privately this week to discuss putting aside their misgivings about John McCain and coalescing around the Republican’s presidential bid while urging him to consider social conservative favorite Mike Huckabee as a running mate.
About 90 of the movement’s leading activists gathered Tuesday night in Denver for a meeting convened by Mathew Staver, who heads the Florida-based legal advocacy group Liberty Counsel.
Many evangelical leaders backed other GOP candidates early on and remain wary of McCain’s commitment to their causes and his previous criticisms of movement leaders. But with the presidential field now set, many evangelical leaders are taking a more pragmatic view, realizing also that the Democratic candidate, Barack Obama, is making a strong play for evangelical voters and talking freely about his faith.
Christian conservative leaders? Choosing pragmatism over principles? You don’t say.
No Trackbacks To “The religious right warms up to McCain“
Republican operatives is more like it, Christians?, what a load
The Religious right should be careful Jesus is returning someday and he’ll running as a Democrat.
I wonder which they are more afraid of, an Obama win or a McCain win without their endorsement? Either would mean a massive loss of influence, but the latter would leave them with a president with a bit of a vindicative side…
More like ‘Swift Boat Christians for (fill in your favorite “R” candidate here)’
HAPPY FOURTH EVERYONE!
If Senator Obama can split the religious right by scooping off the ones who aren’t the bizarre members, hey that’s just more votes for the good guy.
They still haven’t sorted out their ‘misgivings about George Bush’.
pissed off patricia @ 5:
I wonder if that means “crazy town” would lose its status as a significant voting block. Especially if Obama is setting himself up to appeal to those with Christian values instead of those who are politically Christian.
Today of all days, we should have a couple of million of us marching on the Bastille.
But alas
AndrewK @ 7:
If that is what Senator Obama is doing, it just might work. I’m okay with it, for sure.
OK, this religious right stuff is about the blathering of the, as the late Jack Anderson and Mike Royko both called them, “The Hallelujah Boys.”
McCain gets the Hallelujah boys and Obama gets the “paying customers” in the pews.
Hmmm, seems a tad different this time around.
The value-voters ain’t go no values. Morals? Fuck them too!
That’s all this country needs now - another president sucking the dicks of religious wackos. Hasn’t bush done enough to get us to the rapture?
From out here it looks like Racial Bigotry by the Value Voters.
It should be no surprise that such opinionated people would be so hypocritical.
Just another reason for all us to hang tough with Obama and stop this sudden emergence of “know it all” bloggers and others who get all bent out of shape if Barack does not say exactly what they want, every day on every issue. The urgency of assuring Obama is elected could not be clearer. He is using all his wit and energy to position himself effectively for the election. Let’s stay together and help him otherwise we’ll end up extending the dominance of the nut jobs in this country.
sgtmajor @ 14:
I agree, we need to keep focused.
You would not want Huckabee to be a heartbeat away from the presidency… his tenure as Governor of Arkansas has seen incomes and jobs decline; the state has fewer educated professionals than any other, fewer college graduates, fewer women in business, and more poverty than you can imagine.
If the model for America’s future is Arkansas, welcome to your new third-world country, folks. Oh, and happy 4th of July.
sgtmajor @ 14:
I was about to say, Amen, but I guess it’s better to say I agree with you on every point.
McCain has flip-flopped on every issue there is, but let Obama change one bit and the press is ALL over it.
I guess the religious right was against McCain before they were for him.
Flip-floppers!
The religious right needs to be marginalized. Ridiculed in a manner that excludes them from our halls of power (political or otherwise).
Demand people start talking sense!
And again, Obama should be careful who he courts as in the process he may lose non-religious people who are turned off by religion. He warned of “inaunthentic” “transparent” “expressions of faith” and how it’s “dangerous” for progressive to adopt religious terminology.
(see the comments in the Obama Matthew 25 blog)
Jesus prefers white-skinned war-mongers.
I’m not religious but I don’t put myself above anyone who is. Senator Obama’s true supporters aren’t going to turn away just because he appeals to people of faith. They know we have too much to lose with McCain in the white house. They know this election is about so much more than that.
Christian conservative leaders?
“Vile, worthless scum” is more like it.
Today in the Palm Beach Post it said that our gov. Charlie Crist is getting married. It has been said that he could not be McCain’s veep because Crist was gay. So no one knows what to make of this upcoming marriage. I have some thoughts, but I better keep them to myself.
Ib think when they found out that their dear ‘Uncle Sam’ was going to conyinue paying them money all of a sudden he’s not so bad after all.
“‘The only evangelicals that will support Obama are the ones who haven’t read their Bible,’ Burress said.”
Man, I hate this mentality. Because the Bible can be interpreted in an infinite number of ways depending on what context or emphasis you put on the text. With that said, I wish we could get to a point in our nation where our legal and political decisions weren’t made based on a book written several hundred years ago, canonized for political rather than spiritual reasons, and the root cause of all of the bloodshed and suffering in the world for the last few thousand years.
Can we just judge our candidates based on their proposals, principles, perceived integrity (after all they are politicians and have none), and political history? I know that’s asking the average Joe Blow a lot when he has American Idol and the latest episode of Cop Drama to watch, two jobs to work, and 3 kids to take around to all their extra-curricular activities, but people need to realize that these political choices have a direct impact on the rest of their daily lives.
Oh well, I know I’m preaching in a vacuum.
Ex-Canuck @ 12:
amen to that! lets hope obama doesnt get a message from god to attack iran, we allready have one idiot who heard the lord wisper in his ear , attack iraq george, now we know it was just cheny throwing his voice and laughing later as he said what a moroon!
All these born-agains have a dirty secret. They all found Jesus in court ordered AA and NA meetings. Most of them actually have black cavities in their brains from all the drugs and booze. This is why they are all so crazy.
Anyone who thinks McSame doesn’t look bad needs an eye exam in the worst way. Some people love to put their brains on hold and follow along behind any idiotic fucktard. This is one more case of the blind leading the blind.
MAJeff @ 23:
Amen to that!!
♠Bangkok Bob♥ @ 13:
It looks like this no matter what angle you look at it because that’s exactly what’s going on here.
Ironically, Obama seems to be a more devout Christian than McCain, whose “faith” seems to be of the “political necessity” variety.
So… what could the fundies’ problem with Obama be, then?
Floridiot @ 8:
I tried, but decided to turn back when I hit Bermuda.
The funny thing is that Obama is the one who has a clear testimony about being born again as a Christian. That is unless you define Christian as someone who trusts Christ as their saviour, is against abortion and against equal rights for gays.
So now these people have to tell their flock, “Never mind what I’ve said about McSenile in the past. I was wrong and he’s a man of God after all.” I’m sure that will be well received and will not affect their credibility in the slightest.
Perhaps not so to the religious conservatives but during last year’s National Review hosted Ship of Fools, McCain was…
And people are questioning if questioning his military service to see if McCain is qualified to be president is out of bounds.
Conservatives were calling him crazy last year. Does anyone believe anything has really changed about him aside from his body-snatching of George W. Bush?
Steve @ 34:
I’ve looked for Jesus’ statements about abortion and gays but have never been able to locate them. Maybe some helpful biblical scholar can help me out.
Ironic, isn’t it? These “Christians” don’t forgive too easy, do they?
Rusty Bombshell Video Shackleford @ 37:
Thats in that part of the bible that only Christian leaders on the right are allowed to see by god. All the little people aren’t allowed to see that part because you couldn’t understand it, and who then would lead the flock.
Rusty Bombshell Video Shackleford @ 37:
Yehoshua never spoke of them. The anti-gay and anti-abortion crowd plays to popular prejudices and can only find a few scriptures, some 6 I believe that refer to homosexual practices and ignore the hundreds that speak to heterosexual practice and come to the conclusions that they do. Biblically, gays and abortion are non-issues, it’s only a few loons that seem to think they are all that there is to the Faith.
James @ 26:
As a Christian, I wholeheartedly agree. The first statements remind me of the Rabbinic law of interpretation that any verse in Torah can be correctly interpreted 77 ways. As a Christian, raised in Evangelical Protestantism, it’s clear that we Protestants ought to adopt that rule from the Jews, as Protestants with their “clear scripture” are divided much worse than any other Christian wing.
39 diamondmc
Yeshua ben Joseph being Jewish himself would probably hold to Jewish tradition regarding abortion.
According to Jewish tradition, which mayn’t be uniform over all groups, there are two periods at which a baby may be considered alive. In Genesis, it says, and I’m paraphrasing, G-d breathed the breath of life into Adam, and he became a living soul. In other words, Adam wasn’t alive until he was breathing.
Another tradition says a foetus isn’t alive until the period of quickening, which is when the little bugger starts breakdancing in his mother’s womb.
However, the baby was considered the father’s property even before birth, although it would only inherit it’s Jewishness from the mother in the case of a mixed marriage. Additionally, the phrase commonly translated into “Thou shalt not suffer a Witch to live,” more accurately would be translated as poisoner. I think that’s arguing semantics, since Witches were considered to be brewers of poison. An herbal concoction that could heal one person could kill another. Additionally, rival leaders commonly poisoned each other (at least in Greece and Rome), and who would they buy the poison from?
However, the “poisons” could be used to cause spontaneous abortion and that would’ve caused concerns too in a patriarchal society. Even though daughters were less valuable, they were often bartering chips to marry into better society. In Genesis, Chapter 19, Verses 1-7, he Biblical patriarch Lot tried to offer his underaged virgin daughters to a rapacious mob to save some angels.
ysbaddaden @ 42:
I would have also mentioned the trial by ordeal and Yahweh’s commands to the Israelites to rip pregnant women open on many occasions. To go strictly by the Bible the way Protestants and Sadducees do (or in the case of the latter, did), there’s precious little to state that abortion is a condemned practice.
41 General_Rennenkampf Says:
As a Christian, I wholeheartedly agree. The first statements remind me of the Rabbinic law of interpretation that any verse in Torah can be correctly interpreted 77 ways.
_____________________________________________________________________
Isn’t that one of the basis for Gematria?
I have to admit I can’t get the hang of that.
It also sounds reminiscent of a someone who asked Yesua how many times he can forgive another, 10 times? And Yeshua answered 10 times 10 would be just the beginning.
ysbaddaden @ 44:
Exactly right. Biblical interpretation, or interpretation of religious texts, period, is never a cut-and-dry ironclad thing. Interpretation has as much gray as black and white and deciding which is which is the art of it.
As for getting the hang of it, if you look at it, there may be different levels of interpretation from one person, whereas another person may see entirely different levels. The way both being correct goes is that insofar as both can see and clearly understand, that they are correct owing to their common humanity and the mindset that humanity brings.