Barack Obama's meeting with evangelical powerhouses earlier this week, as I wrote yesterday, is sure to roil the religious right, already angered by John McCain's lackluster efforts to prove his love. But while it shows that Obama aims to beat Republicans at their 30-year hold on the evangelical vote, Obama needs to be more forthright to his more secular-minded supporters about what he's telling religious leaders behind closed doors (the event was off the record at the pastors' request, not Obama's).
I don't take issue with candidates speaking to religious audiences, and laying out their philosophical and policy positions on issues of importance to those audiences -- whether it be abortion, gay marriage, global warming or torture. But Obama doesn't need to stray into Godtalk territory to win over the evangelicals he has the best chance of convincing: the centrists.
Obama might feel like he needs to bend over backwards to prove that he's not a scary radical Christian or a Muslim, but he shouldn't bend too far to win over conservatives. Most of them are not going to vote for him anyway.
One unconvinced conservative from this week's Chicago meeting was Stephen Strang, the evangelical publisher. This week he blogged about his reluctant attendance at the meeting, and how Obama responded to his question about abortion:
Since his response was “off-the-record,” I can say that the time he took to answer was probably 15 minutes. He came across as thoughtful and much more of a “centrist” than what I would have expected. He did not appear to be the crazy leftist that is being supported by George Soros and his radical leftist friends.
For Strang, of course, "crazy leftist" is your basic Democrat who advocates for reproductive rights. Obama coming off as a "centrist" might be good for his ability to win over the more centrist evangelicals (Strang, and other conservatives, have made clear that there's little he can do to win them over), but what is Obama saying to his base? I'd like to hear how it took Obama fifteen minutes to explain (hopefully) why he will protect legal abortion.
--Sarah Posner
