{"id":15696,"date":"2008-05-29T12:45:29","date_gmt":"2008-05-29T16:45:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/15696.html"},"modified":"2008-05-29T12:45:29","modified_gmt":"2008-05-29T16:45:29","slug":"mccain-annoys-religious-right-with-hageeparsley-snubs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/mccain-annoys-religious-right-with-hageeparsley-snubs\/","title":{"rendered":"McCain annoys religious right with Hagee\/Parsley snubs"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nothing about John McCain’s outreach to radical, evangelical preachers has gone well. After securing the support of right-wing televangelists like John Hagee and Rod Parsley, the Republican presidential candidate has faced a series of headaches, with one nutty revelation about the preachers after another. Were it not for the media largely giving McCain a pass for his radical associations, it might have been a total disaster.<\/p>\n

Once reporters did start paying attention to this, McCain had a choice — stand by the extremists (and offend sensible people everywhere) or reject the extremists (and offend their rabid religious-right followers). McCain gambled, probably correctly, that it was worth the backlash from the GOP’s theocratic base, and decided to dump Hagee and Parsley last week<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Ever since, the evangelical grumbling has gotten louder<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The candidate’s abrupt turnabout brought criticism not only from secular viewers, who questioned why he had aligned himself with controversial religious voices, but also from evangelicals, who said he may have alienated a powerful bloc of potential Republican voters.<\/p>\n

“He wants us to support him, but as soon as his back was against the wall, he overreacted. He is now less likely to get the evangelical vote and will have a difficult time getting strong endorsements from other ministers,” said Bishop Harry R. Jackson Jr., founder and chairman of the High Impact Leadership Coalition, an evangelical group that advises ministers on political and policy issues.<\/p>\n

“For McCain to have to repudiate these people is much worse than ever having their endorsement in the first place,” said Doug Wead, a political consultant who ranked 1,000 evangelical pastors for former president George H.W. Bush to court for endorsements. “If evangelical Christians feel this is an attack on them, even if they don’t agree with Parsley and Hagee or follow them, it could galvanize them against McCain.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It’s the worst of both worlds. Sensible people are bothered by McCain reaching out and campaigning with certifiable lunatics in the first place, and unhinged religious-right activists are bothered by McCain throwing two of their high-profile leaders under the bus.<\/p>\n

If only McCain had thought to Google these two before spending a year trying to win them over.
\n
\nStar Parker, a fairly prominent far-right voice, devoted her syndicated column<\/a> to the subject this week, arguing that this debacle will come back to haunt McCain.<\/p>\n

John McCain wants Americans to elect him to provide tough leadership in a dangerous world. But when it just takes some mud slung from a few left-wing websites to drive him under a rock, you have to wonder. […]<\/p>\n

John McCain says he’s a Reagan Republican. In a 1985 interview with Pat Robertson, then President Reagan said, “I am convinced this is a nation under God. And as long as we recognize that and believe that, I think He’ll help us.”<\/p>\n

I wonder if John McCain believes it? I wonder if John McCain really wants to be president?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In my heart of hearts, I’m hard pressed to imagine this doing long-term damage. For the general public, the Hagee and Parsley stories were barely a blip on the radar, if voters heard about them at all. For the religious right, six months is a long time, and for far-right grassroots activists, simple partisanship will rule the day come November.<\/p>\n

But in the meantime, it is entertaining to see this controversy cause McCain so much trouble.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nothing about John McCain’s outreach to radical, evangelical preachers has gone well. After securing the support of right-wing televangelists like John Hagee and Rod Parsley, the Republican presidential candidate has faced a series of headaches, with one nutty revelation about the preachers after another. Were it not for the media largely giving McCain a pass […]<\/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-15696","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15696","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=15696"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15696\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15696"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15696"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15696"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}