{"id":13097,"date":"2007-10-03T12:45:16","date_gmt":"2007-10-03T16:45:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/13097.html"},"modified":"2007-10-03T12:45:16","modified_gmt":"2007-10-03T16:45:16","slug":"rudy-runs-round-religious-right-leaders","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/rudy-runs-round-religious-right-leaders\/","title":{"rendered":"Rudy runs ’round religious right leaders"},"content":{"rendered":"

Rudy Giuliani may think he can fool voters<\/a> at large about his positions on social issues, but the former mayor isn’t stupid — he knows conning religious right leaders is impossible. Dobson & Co. are well aware of Giuliani’s background, and won’t fall for “strict constructionist” talking points. It’s precisely why some of this crowd is prepared to consider<\/a> third-party options.<\/p>\n

It’s also why Giuliani refuses to be in the same room<\/a> as them.<\/p>\n

Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, the Republican frontrunner in national polls, has avoided meeting with the nation’s most powerful socially conservative leaders, and instead is taking his appeal directly to conservative activists at the local level.<\/p>\n

Giuliani has not met with the leaders who make up the Arlington Group, a coalition of influential conservatives who have met as a group with Giuliani’s chief rivals, former Sen. Fred Thompson (R-Tenn.) and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney.<\/p>\n

Giuliani is also the only major Republican candidate who has not responded to an invitation to attend a briefing later this month sponsored by the Family Research Council, a prominent advocacy group representing evangelical Christians.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It sets up an interesting contrast between the religious right and the NRA. Giuliani has referred to the NRA’s members as “extremists”; he’s fought the group on the assault-weapons ban; and he filed a federal lawsuit as mayor against the nation’s gun manufacturers for violent crimes involving firearms. What’s more, he’s blasted the gun industry as one that “profits from the suffering of innocent people.”<\/p>\n

And yet, that hasn’t stopped Giuliani from reaching out to the NRA’s leadership, and attending the group’s recent national convention. The message from the campaign seemed to be: “let’s find some common ground.” It probably didn’t work, but perhaps the hostility won’t be as intense moving forward.<\/p>\n

But when it comes to Christian conservative leaders, Giuliani doesn’t even want to bother. This is a crowd that expects candidates to kiss their rings, but Giuliani won’t return their phone calls. No wonder they’re mulling their third-party options.
\n
\nThere is, of course, an exception. Giuliani is blowing off every prominent social conservative heavyweight in the country, except one: TV preacher Pat Robertson. Giuliani has been to Regent University, he’s been a regular on the Christian Broadcasting Network, he’s sat down a few times with CBN’s David Brody, and as Steve M.<\/a> reminds me, Giuliani and Robertson have been like two peas in a pod<\/a>.<\/p>\n

He and Robertson seem to have been pals for years. If you go to the page on the Regent U Web site that reports on the Giuliani speech, you see this: “With his trademark good humor, Dr. Robertson related the story of their shared prior cancer diagnoses, and his hospital-room call from the Mayor to offer words of encouragement.”<\/p>\n

That was in 2003. (Giuliani’s cancer diagnosis came in 2000.) Clearly Giuliani knew four years ago that he was probably going to be running for president, and he was reaching out to a guy he assumed could help him a lot.<\/p>\n

And apparently they hit it off. In 2005, Robertson appeared on ABC News and said of Giuliani, “He did a super job running the city of New York and I think he’d make a good president.” He added, “Rudy’s a very good friend of mine. He’s a great guy.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As it turns out, I’d argue this says a lot more about Robertson than Giuliani. Practically every prominent Christian fundamentalist leader in the country finds Giuliani’s personal life and social-policy positions offensive, but Robertson doesn’t seem to mind at all.<\/p>\n

The obvious explanation happens to be the right one: Robertson’s principles are surprisingly malleable. He wants a seat at the table, and goes where the political winds take him. Giuliani knows this, so he’s happy to play the game.<\/p>\n

Dobson, Wildmon, Weyrich, & Co. are ideologues, not partisans, and don’t care about being schmoozed. The dynamic to watch is whether these guys have the power they think they have. Giuliani’s betting they don’t. We’ll see what happens.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rudy Giuliani may think he can fool voters at large about his positions on social issues, but the former mayor isn’t stupid — he knows conning religious right leaders is impossible. Dobson & Co. are well aware of Giuliani’s background, and won’t fall for “strict constructionist” talking points. It’s precisely why some of this crowd […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13097","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13097","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13097"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13097\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13097"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13097"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13097"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}