EVANGELICALS ACTUALLY BELIEVE IN FAMILY VALUES, JOHN McCAIN NOT SO MUCH

[UPDATE 1: The New York Times has a story today about the steps the McCain camp is taking to court evangelicals.

It says that evangelicals are being outreached to by McCain, mostly through campaign emails, but they're largely in a "holding pattern" around his candidacy.

Meanwhile: Obama's hiring a "full time evangelical-focused staff member" to make some shit happen, God knows.

It also quotes David Brody of CBN's Brody File, who says that although Rev. Wright has hurt Obama among evangelicals, with that controversy behind him Obama has "great potential still...to reintroduce himself...especially with his spiritual talk."]

[UPDATE 2: I guess it's "McCain's Evangelical Problem Day"...Conservative pundit Bob Novaks' take here. My guess is it won't help that Rev. Hagee (kind of a big deal in the God-fearing crowd) is going around telling people: "McCain threw me under the bus."]

[Original post] 

I still believe Barack Obama will win this election. He’s no where near as intimidating as he was in February, but it was never a realistic view that he — or any candidate — could emerge from a primary contest against the Clinton family and not be bloodied up by it. (Ironically, he’s also stronger because of it).

But what gives me hope that he’ll win has as much to do with McCain’s weaknesses as Obama’s strengths.

McCain has big problems with the most imporant segment of the Republican base: evangelicals. Big problems. And more than anything else this will lead to his downfall in November.

In 2004, Karl Rove motivated evangelicals to support Bush in record numbers, and he still barely beat John Kerry. The election came down to one state, Ohio. McCain won’t enjoy those evangelical numbers.

Everyone’s talking about Obama’s woman problem. Fair enough. It is a problem; but Sen. Clinton just dropped out 24 hours ago, so if Obama’s going to gain among women he’ll begin that process now.

McCain, in contrast, has been skating along for months now in frontrunner status and we still hear things like this from Mark DeMoss, a big time mover and shaker in Republican evangelical circles.

“I am surprised by how little I’ve seen or read in conservative circles about McCain since February. I don’t think I’ve gotten one email or letter or phone call from anybody in America in the last four months saying anything about this election or urging that we unite behind John McCain and put aside whatever differences we have. Back in the fall and winter, you’d get several things a day from conservatives saying, “The future of the Supreme Court is at stake. We have to stop Hillary Clinton. Get behind so and so—or don’t’ go with this guy.” It’s just very quiet.”

This coming after DeMoss chastised McCain for rejecting the support of 2 controversial evangelical preachers once it came out that they’d made some hard-to-explain-away statements about Jews, the Anti-Christ, Hitler and gays. McCain sought these guys out when he needed them to get the nomination; then at the first sign of trouble he ditched them. Not exactly endearing him to the party faithful.

But wait, it gets worse. McCain has a family values problem too.

He can try his best to appear like he shares evangelical values, but the fact is he doesn’t. He was a serial adulterer in his youth, having many affairs, and he left his first wife, Carol, for a trophy heiress after she had a car accident and was left without the full use of her legs. Classy move.

The Daily Mail, a UK publication, (because apparently the American media is too chicken-shit-in-McCain’s-lap to report on this) published a blistering piece today that’s sure to make evangelicals want to flock to his banner.

The article is entitled: “The wife U.S. Republican John McCain callously left behind,” and it has the rare occasion to get McCain’s first wife on record. Keeping a low profile throughout this campaign, she finally spoke up about her marriage. Even now she mercifully tried to downplay McCain’s bad behavior, by saying:

‘My marriage ended because John McCain didn’t want to be 40, he wanted to be 25. You know that happens…it just does.’

Admirable on her behalf; 1000 times more so than McCain.

But wait:

“Some of McCain’s acquaintances are less forgiving, however. They portray the politician as a self-centred womaniser who effectively abandoned his crippled wife to ‘play the field’. They accuse him of finally settling on Cindy, a former rodeo beauty queen, for financial reasons.”

Now, before our Republican readers scream bloody murder, we’re not talking about Democratic acquaintances here, these are fellow GOPers who knew him well; including Ross Perot, that bastion of Democratic liberalism.

I can imagine some of our GOP readers saying: “Well, that’s all well and good but do you think [evangelicals] will vote for a black guy?” In a word, yes. Obama can speak the language better than McCain, by a mile.

And if there’s so much time between now and November, and I agree that they’re is, what the heck is John McCain waiting for to reach out to the Christian Right? The longer he waits the more it will look like he’s reaching out to them because of political necessity — which it will be — as opposed to genuinely caring about their issues.

And simply pledging pro-life judges isn’t going to be enough. The evangelical community is broadening their horizon; I’ve seen reports about issues from Darfur to child poverty to climate change all registering with evangelicals now in significant numbers.

DeMoss himself thinks Obama can pull up to 40 percent of the evangelical vote. He arrives at this number by figuring that 1/3 of white evangelicals voted for Bill Clinton in his second run. DeMoss incorrectly states that this was at the height of the Lewinsky affair — which happened after he was elected — but his math is right.

Is Obama a big gimpy right now? Sure. Does he have work to do with women, poor whites AND Hispanics in particular? Absolutely. But McCain is a much weaker candidate than we’re being led to believe. The media licked their lips and feasted on the Obama/Clinton bloodletting, allowing St. McCain to slide on many inconsistent statements/positions he voiced during the Democratic pay-per-view deathmatch.

But now we’re in the general election mode. And Obama is about 10 inches tougher than many people realize. He’s supremely confident in his abilities and he doesn’t like to lose. He’s going to pivot hard to John McCain; he will stand up to him on foreign policy; he will fight for evangelical votes (David Broady of the Christian Broadcasting Network’s Brody File has been all over these developments); he will make a play for Independent voters; and he’ll be registering tens of thousands of young and minority voters this summer.

Predictably, the Republicans will scream: Rev. Wright, Rev. Wright, William Ayers, William Ayers. They’ll pump the political sub-terrain with false smears which Obama will address forcefully and directly, because we’ve learned from the Swiftboat fiasco. And they’ll try to sow division among the country along racial and gender fault lines.

Democrats should not underestimate the work we have in front of us to close the rifts in our party; but Republicans ought not underestimate how hungry the nation is for Obama’s message.

That’s why you see John McCain, hilariously, now trying to position himself as the change candidate.

It’s not blind optimism or YES WE CAN-euphoria that tells me that we’ll beat John McCain; not only because our ideas are better, but because the Republican party nominated someone who simply can’t get it up with his party’s most crucial voting block. And that will spell defeat this November.

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Tags: 700 Club, Barack Obama, CBN, Christian Broadcasting Network, Christian Right, David Brody, Evangelicals, Hillary Clinton, John McCain, Mark DeMoss