The Family Research Council’s big “Values Voter Summit” kicks off in Washington today, where thousands of Christian right leaders and activists from around the country will be gathering to try and figure out just what the hell they’re supposed to do with the GOP next year. Where the presidential race is concerned, it looks like the major preoccupation this weekend will be determining how to use the Christian right’s influence within the Republican primary process, as opposed to plotting a breakaway effort for the general election.
The Washington Post reports that, for many, the purpose of the meeting is straightforward: stop Rudy Giuliani. The former mayor’s supposedly pro-choice views are bad enough, but according to the Post, Giuliani’s outreach efforts have failed to impress fundamentalists:
[A]s he attempts to build bridges to Christian leaders nationally, local conservative activists say they see little evidence of those efforts at the ground level. [...]
“He has done everything to . . . put his finger in our eyes and tell us this constituency does not matter,” said Steve Scheffler, head of the Iowa Christian Alliance.
Scheffler said he refused to invite the former mayor to an event his group held last month after a series of snubs that included Giuliani’s absence from a forum in June, his refusal to appear at house parties the group holds and the campaign’s refusal to fill out a questionnaire.
The article quotes Southern Baptist Convention President James Page describing the Christian right’s “angst,” while James Dobson is said to be “almost despondent” about the nomination process so far. Much of this despair, again, probably has less to do with any dearth of candidates willing to pander to the fundies than with the fact that Giuliani continues to ride high in the polls — even among evangelicals — despite the entrenched evangelical leadership’s efforts to turn their flock against him.
Still, it’s far more efficient to back a horse in the primary than to go the third-party route, and my guess is that the bulk of the Christian right leadership will make every effort to find a way to work within the GOP this cycle. With Sam Brownback’s exit and Mike Huckabee’s surging Iowa poll numbers, things could be getting clearer. What Huckabee lacks is the ability to raise money. It’s possible that he could go a long way toward solving that problem if he could gain the unambiguous support of the leaders of the Christian right. It wouldn’t catapult him past Giuliani or Romney in the fundraising stakes, but it could make him competitive. Safe to say that this is a very important weekend for Mike Huckabee: if he fails to emerge from the Values Voter confab with at least some kind of show of support from the attendees, it’s hard to see how he’ll be able to build a strong enough national organization to benefit even from a decent showing in Iowa.
For Romney, McCain, and Thompson, this weekend is one more chance to pander to a crowd that really wants to be told it’s beautiful. The trouble is that, while Romney might know the right words to say, he’s still suspiciously Mormon, while McCain is not trusted, and Thompson, so far, is just an all-around flop.
I continue to believe that the great majority of the Christian right movement will try pretty hard to avoid a break with the GOP. This weekend’s events will go a long way toward determining how successful that effort will be.
Something to say?
