Meeting in Denver this week, about 70 conservative evangelical leaders agreed that even though John McCain is not their ideal candidate, they will support him in November.
On his blog, Charisma publisher Stephen Strang, who was one of the conservative evangelicals who attended a June 10 private meeting with Barack Obama, wrote, "Now I believe some Christian leaders are waking up and beginning to understand that McCain does not need to cuddle up to the religious right to deserve our support. And they must get out the message to their millions of followers."
Strang went on to lament that the religious right's larger, long-term problem is that it's known more for what it's against than what it's for:
This reputation comes because a couple of the national Christian leaders come across as grumpy and self-righteous. They are sometimes so dogmatic that if you don't support the things they support with the verbiage they use and to the extent they feel it should be supported, you are suspect and probably shouldn't be a part of their coalition.Thankfully, one or two leaders best known for those traits weren't invited to the Denver meeting.
Ouch!
An account of the meeting in Charisma described the group as "mostly white and middle aged" and worried that Obama was more appealing to younger, African-American, and Latino voters. (Cursed with self-awareness, they are.) The group will also be pushing for McCain to pick Mike Huckabee as his running mate -- Huckabee spoke to the same group earlier this week and his daughter and advisor, Sarah Huckabee, attended the smaller meeting about the presidential race.
Expect an image makeover of sorts for Huckabee, emphasizing his supposed centrist credentials on environmental and poverty issues, and his record of African-American support in Arkansas. And don't be surprised to see a roll-out of conservative African-American support for McCain, perhaps including Alveda King, Martin Luther King, Jr.'s niece, who is now supporting McCain. She is a prominent figure in the wing of the anti-choice movement that claims that Planned Parenthood is part of a conspiracy to commit "black genocide."
Do you think that the religious right loathed Hillary Clinton? Obama "has done the impossible," one meeting participant told Charisma. "He's made Hillary Clinton look good to Christian conservatives."
--Sarah Posner
