Actually, it's not a bad political strategy--if you're what evangelical Christians call a "moral relativist."
Why? Here's a theory:
You see, the complaint of the evangelical political movement (EPM) has been that they have no Republican horse in this presidential race. All the prospective candidates are waaay too liberal, none of them suck up to the EPM the way that George W. Bush always did.
Now, in the space of a week--that "no compromise with morality" objection is gone. All of the sudden--ALL these liberal GOP candidates are being endorsed by some prominent figure in the EPM. Pat Robertson came out for Rudy Giuliani. Evangelical favorite Sam Brownback endorsed McCain. Paul Weyrich and Bob Jones III are endorsing Mitt Romney.
(continued)
What do these evangelicals handing out endorsements this week have in common? Practically every one of them named in the excerpt that follows is thought to be a member of the Council for National Policy; the "brain trust" of the American evangelical political movement. The CNP roster includes the most influential members of the American religious right; it is the crossroads where the most powerful evangelical activists, televangelists, and "social conservatives" network with the Republican party and "secular" conservatives. Republican presidential hopefuls come on their knees to the CNP; the organization sent a shockwave through the various campaigns and the GOP when it announced that it would consider forming a third party rather than back "liberal" Rudy Giuliani as the nominee.
But now, in a biblical lightning flash, things have changed:
Pat Robertson backs Giuliani
http://www.startribune.com/...
Associated Press
Last update: November 07, 2007 – 11:47 AM
WASHINGTON — Televangelist Pat Robertson, founder of the Christian Coalition, endorsed Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani on Wednesday...
The former New York mayor backs abortion rights and gay rights, positions that put him in conflict with conservative GOP orthodoxy, and has been trying to persuade evangelical conservatives like Robertson to overlook their differences on those issues...
Evangelicals have split in their support for the leading Republican candidates. Kansas Sen. Sam Brownback, a favorite of Christian conservatives who dropped out of the race last month, endorsed fellow Sen. John McCain of Arizona on Wednesday. Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney recently announced that Paul Weyrich and Bob Jones III were on board with his candidacy.
Asked about the Robertson endorsement, McCain, at a news conference with Brownback in Dubuque, Iowa, said: "Every once in a while, I'm left speechless. This is one of those times."
Giuliani is best known to voters for leading New York in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Shortly after 9/11, Robertson released a statement in which he said the attacks occurred because Americans had insulted God and lost the protection of heaven by allowing abortion and "rampant Internet pornography."
Like I said: all the GOP hopefuls come to the CNP to be anointed--Giuliani, Romney, Thompson--they all address them and hope to get their nod, because wisdom says the GOP can't win the White House without their backing and all the lovely millions of evangelical votes these guys can deliver via their media chains, the churches and GOTV drives.
So what are we to make of this? Before this week, they were announcing that they could anoint no one--this week they're anointing everybody (except poor Fred Thompson.)
The only explanation I can think of is Machiavellian; not a term usually associated with Christian faith. If they back all the horses in the race--one of them's got to end up as the nominee, right?
If they stuck to their "morality" pose and backed no one--they'd be shut out, once the nomination was decided.
So my guess is that what they are doing is splitting the endorsements between the various contenders--sending up them up as a series of trial balloons before their rank-and-file, and seeing which one of these candidates is least objectionable to the faithful. All the candidates have problems with this constituency--Giuliani's divorce and adultery history, Romney's Mormon faith (which evangelicals have been taught is a dangerous heresy), McCain's less-than-stellar reputation as a conservative. By sending forth different evangelical leaders to endorse them all, the EPM hopes to stay in the election game.
Because when one of the candidates makes it through the convention, with backing by at least some of the CNP powerbrokers--they've still got a toehold in GOP national politics through next year. The alternative is destroying the party's election chances in advance by sticking to their threat: "send us someone we can support; a candidate with solid evangelical values--or we stay home and the Dem wins." If they do that--it's game over for the EPM, this presidential election; no access to the policymaking table.
They know, and the GOP and the candidates know, that is well within the power of the EPM to doom a GOP candidacy to failure a year in advance. But doing that now, this early in the process, would cost the leaders of the EPM power and influence. And these particular "evangelicals" cannot face that--because for them, this has never been about Christ or Christian values. Their particular "Christianity" is all about money, political power, and directing America. If they lose access to the ultimate GOP nominee, they jeopardize that--and that is far more important to them than some "principled stand against abortion."
UPDATE: Yup. As of today, it looks more and more like a "shotgun endorsements" strategy by the leaders of the EPM.
Gary Bauer, a colleague of Dr. James Dobson, has endorsed poor old Fred Thompson. Rick Scarborough is backing no-hoper Mike Huckabee.
The funny thing is that the "roll-out" of these endorsement is all gathered around the same weeks, the same short news cycle. My guess is that that is intentional and organized decision--to the minimize the appearance of division in "the Church" over who the nominee should be. If the different EPM leaders were to break the news of different endorsements sequentially, over a number of weeks, that would look as if they were doing some headline-grabbing, high-profile quarrelling--and they do not want to give that appearance, the appearance that the EPM is dividing on issues of principle and politics.
Doing a number of different endorsements during a single news cycle minimizes the impact of the headlines and also amounts to a general endorsement of the GOP--"it's okay for you to vote for any one of these liberal GOP candidates, evangelicals, all have obtained some kind of "Christian" endorsement--so you don't have to stay home on election day."
And Pat Robertson, by the way, is definitely going to hell if anything he ever said before about the Bible, right and wrong, and abortion is true:
Pat Robertson...threw his support behind former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, saying the "overriding issue" in the race is defending against the "bloodlust of Islamic terrorists" and calling abortion "only one issue" of importance.
Translation: "I think that women who choose abortion are engaged in baby-killing and I've been saying that for decades--but I'm willing to put that on the back burner again to keep a Republican in the White House and keep the wars going."