{"id":13520,"date":"2007-11-08T10:35:57","date_gmt":"2007-11-08T15:35:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/13520.html"},"modified":"2007-11-08T10:35:57","modified_gmt":"2007-11-08T15:35:57","slug":"why-robertsons-endorsement-wont-help-giuliani","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/why-robertsons-endorsement-wont-help-giuliani\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Robertson’s endorsement won’t help Giuliani"},"content":{"rendered":"

TV preacher Pat Robertson’s endorsement of Rudy Giuliani’s presidential campaign startled the political world yesterday, but apparently for all the wrong reasons. The media’s general take was, “Wow, a leading religious right figure is backing the least socially-conservative Republican in the race.” Perhaps the more appropriate response would have been, “Wow, Giuliani is taking a huge risk cozying up to an anti-American lunatic.”<\/p>\n

The biggest mistake over the last 24 hours is the assumption that Robertson still holds sway over evangelical activists in the religious right. In 1997? Sure. But in 2007? Not so much<\/a>.<\/p>\n

…Republican pollster Tony Fabrizio said a recent poll suggests the endorsement is unlikely to move many voters to Giuliani’s column and may antagonize some supporters. Among 1,000 Republican voters, respondents split almost evenly on the question of whether they were more or less likely to vote for a candidate who received Robertson’s endorsement. And by a 3 to 1 ratio, current Giuliani supporters said they would view the endorsement negatively.<\/p>\n

“Robertson has clearly become a polarizing figure in the party, and even more polarizing for Giuliani voters,” Fabrizio said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Robertson was<\/i> an instrumental figure in establishing the religious right as potent political force. But it’s worth remembering from time to time that there are two major wings of the movement: the principled and the political. Players like Dobson, Perkins, Land, and Weyrich care about specific social issues, and aren’t open to compromise. Guys like Robertson want to get invited to cocktail parties in the East Wing.<\/p>\n

The prior has very little tolerance for the latter. Robertson holds about as much influence with the Dobson crowd as I do.
\n
\nYesterday afternoon, the Family Research Council — which is basically a Dobson-created group along the lines of religious right think-tank — took a very provocative step<\/a> by suggesting that Giuliani should explain whether he agrees with Robertson’s belief that Americans were responsible for 9\/11.<\/p>\n

This was clearly the FRC playing hardball, but let’s not loose sight of the context. This was intended to put pressure on Giuliani, whom the FRC opposes, but more importantly, it was a striking rebuke of Robertson personally. The FRC, which maintains quite a bit of power and influence in the religious right, was effectively announcing, “Robertson’s nuts. Giuliani should explain why he’s so friendly with a guy the religious right wants nothing to do with.”<\/p>\n

Indeed, in most religious right circles, Robertson’s name is more likely to inspire eye-rolling than applause. He’s been an embarrassment for years, and hasn’t been invited to sit at the big kids’ table at any point in recent memory. To be sure, he has a small cult who watches The 700 Club (ahem) religiously, and which writes him enough checks to keep his operation afloat, but the typical rank-and-file evangelical isn’t going to reconsider Giuliani as a presidential candidate just because a washed up TV preacher whose influence peaked a decade ago appeared at some press conference.<\/p>\n

The real<\/i> story is how this affects Giuliani. Yesterday was all risk, no reward. The endorsement won’t bring any additional support, but it will bring additional scrutiny.<\/p>\n

Now, if only political reporters could bring themselves to pressure Giuliani to respond to his buddy’s hysterical anti-American tirades, we’d see some real progress.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

TV preacher Pat Robertson’s endorsement of Rudy Giuliani’s presidential campaign startled the political world yesterday, but apparently for all the wrong reasons. The media’s general take was, “Wow, a leading religious right figure is backing the least socially-conservative Republican in the race.” Perhaps the more appropriate response would have been, “Wow, Giuliani is taking a […]<\/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-13520","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13520","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=13520"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13520\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13520"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13520"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13520"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}