The FundamentaList launched in September 2007 with a question that would recur throughout the presidential campaign: Out of the field of GOP presidential hopefuls, whom would James Dobson endorse?
Dobson had just been reassured by the Internal Revenue Service that his personal endorsement of candidates did not jeopardize Focus on the Family's tax-exempt status. Throughout the GOP primary, the press hung on every possible signal emanating from Colorado Springs, convinced that the eventual nominee's emergence would hinge on Dobson's blessing. As it turned out, Dobson withheld judgment, finally endorsing Mike Huckabee when it was too late to make a difference. Some, including Huckabee himself, blamed Dobson and his allies in the religious right for failing to give Huckabee a boost when he needed it most to win the nomination.
Although Dobson remains the most recognizable name in the religious-right leadership, many other figures, less well known outside the movement, and a "Huck's Army" at the grass roots drove Huckabee's candidacy in 2008 and could drive religious-right support for another run in 2012. The fixation on Dobson's endorsement was a creation of the press, not real voters. Many grass-roots activists told me that his endorsement would be meaningful but not essential for their own decision. But Dobson wasn't the only religious-right figure withholding approval of a candidate, and because of the numerous fractures in the GOP base, including a serious split over Mitt Romney's and Mike Huckabee's conservative credentials, John McCain -- whose campaign looked like it had imploded in September of 2007 -- rose to the top of the pack.
As a result of his dithering, though, Dobson sabotaged his own relevance. Religious-right activists rallied around McCain before Dobson endorsed him, and propped up Sarah Palin's vice-presidential candidacy before Dobson offered his seal of approval. In his new book laying out a blueprint for the future of the conservative movement that includes a crucial place for religious conservatism, Huckabee doesn't even mention Dobson's name.
2. The Emergence of Huckabee.
Although Huckabee lost the GOP primary, his run earned him the support of many prominent evangelicals, and many observers saw him as a possible running mate for McCain, or a future leader of a reconstituted religious right.
While Huckabee was passed over as McCain's running mate (in retrospect, perhaps an ill-conceived decision by McCain), he took numerous steps to position himself as a possible movement leader and/or presidential candidate for 2012 or 2016. He formed a political action committee, HuckPAC, in April, to fundraise for fellow Republicans, and he campaigned for McCain and congressional candidates. He scored a weekly television show on Fox News, later signed a deal for a radio show on ABC Radio Networks that will air next year, and published his post-election tell-all/roadmap for his political future, Do the Right Thing.
In the book, Huckabee lashes out against the "Faux-Cons" who opposed his candidacy and the writers at National Review, who found his worship of conservative economic orthodoxy lacking. He claims his grass-roots conservatives are the future of the movement and that "the uprising among non-Beltway conservatives is real."
To harness all that energy, he launched his Vertical Politics Institute, which is "dedicated to finding solutions to the many challenges our nation faces today," through the mobilization and involvement of the grass roots. It's not clear how, exactly, he's going to deploy his new populist foot soldiers, or how big his army is, but he is giving a big fat poke in the eye to the religious-right establishment and conservative elites.
3. The Pastor Problems.
One of the biggest stories about the intersection of the religious right and McCain's campaign was his endorsement by televangelists John Hagee and Rod Parsley, and his later rejection of them.
Longtime readers of the Prospect and The FundamentaList knew all about Parsley and Hagee before they were thrust into the campaign spotlight for their endorsements of McCain. Both the Prospect and God's Profits featured examinations of the men's careers, including the preaching of the highly controversial prosperity gospel, secret fundraising and finances, faith-healings, self-enrichment, lawsuits, authoritarianism, secrecy, calls for war and Armageddon, and, of course, hobnobbing with the Republican power elite. McCain's quest for their endorsement was straight out of the Republican playbook -- but the fact that Parsley had essentially campaigned for Bush in 2004 and Hagee had written a book endorsing Bush in 2000 was largely ignored amid the fascination with Hagee's description of the Catholic Church as a "great whore" and Parsley's claim that "Islam is a false religion."
In the YouTube age, though, clips from sermons rule the day, and McCain ultimately rejected Hagee because of one in which he lauded the Holocaust as part of God's plan, and Parsley for another showing him saying that destroying Islam was part of God's plan for America. The whole episode did more damage to McCain's career than Parsley's or Hagee's; as they soldiered on in their battle against Satan, McCain was denounced by the religious right for toying with their feelings and by the rest of the world for pandering to such people in the first place.
4. The Rise and Fall of Sarah Palin.
During her honeymoon with the Republican Party, Palin looked like she -- not Dobson -- would save McCain with the base.
Her conservative credentials were sealed by her decision to continue with a pregnancy when she knew the baby would have Down syndrome, and when she was picked as McCain's VP, Palin became the overnight darling of the religious-right base, which didn't even flinch at the mounting evidence of her utter lack of preparation or qualifications for high office. The religious right's greatest fascination with Palin remains not her political accomplishments (or lack thereof) but her motherhood, good looks, and her destruction of the mold of the submissive evangelical woman, even as wifely submission is, for many fundamentalists, biblically required.
More than any electoral event since Pat Robertson's failed 1988 presidential run, Palin's candidacy laid bare the deep divide between the religious right and the rest of America. That divide is, more than ever, an existential dilemma for the Republican Party.
5. Televangelist Investigations.
In November 2007, Charles Grassley, the ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, launched an investigation into the financial practices of six prominent televangelists, questioning whether they had used tax-exempt donor funds for their own enrichment.
The targeted televangelists preach the prosperity gospel, or Word of Faith doctrine (as do Parsley and Hagee), through which the televangelists ask their followers to "sow a seed" (give them money) in order to "reap a harvest" (get a supernatural financial return on their investment). Grassley was interested not in the doctrine but in whether all those seeds were going to mansions, luxury cars, and private jets for the televangelists.
Although McCain got a lot of heat for seeking Parsley's and Hagee's endorsement, Huckabee got very little for appearing on Grassley target Kenneth Copeland's television program, letting Copeland raise campaign cash for him, and defending him against the Senate investigation. Huckabee, a Southern Baptist who calls himself a "Bapti-costal," positioned himself as a bridge between two sometimes conflicting forces within religious conservatism as Copeland blamed Grassley (a Baptist) for scapegoating Pentecostals over religious doctrine, not tax policy.
The Grassley investigation isn't over, but the Senate Finance Committee probably has other pressing matters to attend to before it goes toe to toe with Kenneth Copeland.
