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.<\/p>\n
Consider an example. In October, the Family Research Council hosted a “Values Voter Summit,” and nearly every Republican candidate 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<\/a> with just 1.4% support. McCain did even worse than Rudy Giuliani, who supports abortion and gay rights.<\/p>\n Not enough? How about this — James Dobson issued a statement in February, insisting he would not vote for McCain<\/a> in the general election and would stay home if McCain is the GOP nominee. For that matter, Pat Robertson has said he would not vote for McCain “under any circumstances<\/a>.” Dobson and Robertson, of course, are the movement’s two biggest, most well-known leaders.<\/p>\n The whole “agents of intolerance” thing<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n 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<\/a>.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Christian conservative leaders? Choosing pragmatism over principles? You don’t say. “Obama is a considerable threat to our values,” Staver said. “At the same time, Sen. McCain recently has been reaching out to evangelicals and conservative voters that we represent.”<\/p>\n Even so, [Phil Burress, a leading anti-gay activist in Ohio] said that at this point, conservative Christians are motivated more out of opposition to Obama than enthusiasm for McCain.<\/p>\n “People are not saying, ‘Let’s all go out and support John McCain,'” Burress said. “It’s more like, ‘We have to do what we have to do for our country.’ Basically, that boiled down to John McCain.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n What’s striking, though, is that the religious right has ended up looking like a cheap date. McCain has barely done any real outreach to the movement at all — indeed, McCain had two people devoting to courting evangelical Christians, and he fired both<\/a> — and while he’s made all kinds of far-right assurances to the GOP’s business and neocon factions, the religious right hasn’t won much in the way concessions. He even threw John Hagee and Rod Parsley under the bus — after months of cultivating their support — once they became inconvenient.<\/p>\n Less than a month ago, Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, told the NYT<\/a>, “For John McCain to be competitive, he has to connect with the [evangelical] base to the point that they’re intense enough that they’re contagious. Right now they’re not even coughing.”<\/p>\n
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\nPlenty of heavy hitters were at this week’s meetings, including Staver, Phyllis Schlafly, Tim and Beverly LaHaye, David Barton, and Rick Scarborough, all of whom basically agreed to grin and put up with McCain.<\/p>\n