As soon as the religious right political movement started making real inroads in the ’80s, the movement’s groups and leaders have envisioned circumstances in which they’d play the roll of kingmakers, particularly at the presidential level. If a candidate planned on getting the GOP nomination, the Christian conservatives thought, they’d have to jump through the far-right’s hoops first.
Unfortunately, the religious right is moving one step closer to making this vision a reality.
Leaders of conservative Christian organizations plan to jointly interview Republican contenders for the 2008 presidential nomination, perhaps even endorsing one of them — steps that could expand their already considerable political influence.
“We’d like to try to stay together,” Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, said at a breakfast with reporters Wednesday. The ad hoc group includes “free thinkers” and “strong personalities,” he says, but they might unite behind a candidate who “unquestionably” best represented their views and priorities.
Gary Bauer, president of American Values, said in an interview that the sit-down sessions, likely to begin after the 2006 elections, would be “a very effective way to nail down where people are on cultural issues.” He said candidates have become “very astute” at answering written questionnaires in ways that avoid making firm commitments.
And who’d participate in this little club? The FRC’s Perkins, Focus on the Family’s James Dobson, Paul Weyrich of the Free Congress Foundation, and the Rev. Donald Wildmon of the American Family Association. (The AFA is the group with the boycott fixation.) Perkins told Roll Call that as many as 18 religious right organizations would be involved in the effort.
The entire set-up here is deeply disturbing. Every presidential aspirant will line up, kiss Dobson’s ring, take turns trying to convince evangelical leaders that he’s just as crazy as they are, and making all manner of promises about all the radical things we’ll see if only the religious leaders will endorse their campaign. The democratic process isn’t supposed to work this way.
To be sure, there are some countries in the world where politicians have to receive the backing of clerics and other religious leaders in order to succeed. Off the top of my head, they’d include Iran, Afghanistan under Taliban rule, Saudi Arabia….