Heeeere we go again!

[speaker]

They're pretty desperate to do this--------and I think it's a mistake.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17149388/

"WASHINGTON - The Republicans’ first primary contest is next week, and it’s not in New Hampshire. It is in Orlando, at the annual meeting of the National Religious Broadcasters. GOP presidential candidates will be there to try to generate buzz that will translate into evangelical airtime — and support in the “base” in 2008.

Unlike 2000 (and of course 2004) George W. Bush and Karl Rove don’t have the event wired. So it is wide open — just as the Republican nomination race is — and so Orlando is an important pit stop, especially for Sen. John McCain, former Gov. Mitt Romney, former Gov. Mike Huckabee and Sen. Sam Brownback. All of them want to win the nomination by building from “the base” outward, the way it’s been done in the party since the days of Reagan.

One candidate will be conspicuous by his absence: Front-runner Rudy Giuliani..................."

[Micheal Joseph]

Below is the full article. It seems most web sites do not allow you to read the article after a certain amount of time, so clicking on the link won't help you.

Micheal


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The preacher primary
GOP leaders battle for support from the Three Kingmakers

By Howard Fineman
MSNBC
Updated: 9:37 p.m. ET Feb 14, 2007


Howard Fineman

-------------------------------------------------------------

• E-mail


WASHINGTON - The Republicans’ first primary contest is next week, and it’s not in New Hampshire. It is in Orlando, at the annual meeting of the National Religious Broadcasters. GOP presidential candidates will be there to try to generate buzz that will translate into evangelical airtime — and support in the “base” in 2008.

Unlike 2000 (and of course 2004) George W. Bush and Karl Rove don’t have the event wired. So it is wide open — just as the Republican nomination race is — and so Orlando is an important pit stop, especially for Sen. John McCain, former Gov. Mitt Romney, former Gov. Mike Huckabee and Sen. Sam Brownback. All of them want to win the nomination by building from “the base” outward, the way it’s been done in the party since the days of Reagan.

One candidate will be conspicuous by his absence: Front-runner Rudy Giuliani. I am told that he won’t be there, but in a sense he doesn’t have to be. He’s not trying to win by getting right with the religious conservatives on cultural and faith issues. If he is going to get their votes, it will be through other means, or by default in a general election race against, say, Hillary Clinton.

The Three Kingmakers
Because there is no obvious and overpowering standard-bearer for the cause of the religious right, age-old fault lines and feuds are re-emerging among the titans who control the Sacred Satellite Dishes. Each of them thinks that he can anoint the One.

The Three Kingmakers have familiar names and big, traditional audiences on radio, television and now, the Internet: the Rev. Jerry Falwell, Dr. Pat Robertson and Dr. James Dobson. A younger generation (or two) is coming along, but these remain big brand names in the burgeoning world of all-Christian commerce.


Click for related content
Romney targets message to religious voters
McCain, Romney vie for support
Giuliani speaks to Republicans in Sacramento



There are two main fault lines among them: the one in Virginia, which separates Falwell and Robertson; and the one that separates Dobson, in his mountain fastness of Colorado Springs, from those he genially regards as amateurs (everybody else).

Here’s how the dynamics are working right now. Falwell’s anointee-designate is McCain. The reasons are personal but, more important, historical and, in a sense, familial.

McCain, Bush and Falwell
interactive

• Analyzing the 2008 presidential field

The Founding Father of modern TV preachers in politics, Falwell has been reverend-in-residence in the Bush family for 20 years. Back when Ronald Reagan was president, the late Lee Atwater cultivated Falwell on behalf of then-Vice President George H.W. Bush. Falwell became Bush’s trusted ally in the 1988 race, and in the losing race for re-election in 1992. In both campaigns, Falwell got to know George H.W. Bush, and Falwell was instrumental in helping to unify the mega-preachers behind Junior in the 2000 race.

McCain and Falwell went at it in 2000 — the senator called him an “agent of intolerance” — but things have changed since then. McCain and his advisers decided that the route to the nomination in 2008 lay in loyalty to the Bush legacy, and to Bush personally. It was a natural step, then, for McCain to begin cultivating Falwell, the family political preacher. He has done just that — and Falwell has been only too happy to help “educate” McCain on the issues.

Last May, McCain delivered the commencement address at Falwell’s Liberty University.

But the Falwell-McCain alliance cost the candidate whatever chance he might have had to gain the support of Virginia’s other leading religious broadcaster, Robertson. The Commonwealth is barely big enough to contain the both of them: their differences are deep — theologically, organizationally and personally. To the Yale-educated Robertson, son of a senator, Falwell is a country upstart. I’ve always thought that one reason Robertson mounted his own campaign for the presidency in 1988 is that he couldn’t abide the original Falwell-Bush alliance.

Romney’s edge
So Robertson has to have his own candidate, and there is no way it would be McCain. The good doctor seems to have taken a liking to Romney, whose father was a governor and who had the good sense to get graduate degrees from Harvard. Robertson’s CBN network ran a glowing profile of Romney, a piece that studiously ignored some of the Mormon doctrinal teachings that would seem calculated to make even Robertson’s helmet of TV hair stand on end.

Romney is expected to be the commencement speaker this May at Robertson’s Regent University.

Among the Three Kingmakers, it seems that only Dobson is unsure of his nominee. He seems to be working by the process of elimination. He already has declared that he would not personally vote for McCain — take that, Jerry — but in a lesser-noticed interview he also said that he could not vote for Giuliani (no surprise there).

Dobson has said nice things about Romney, but at a private meeting of Christian activists in Washington last week, I am told, he made the case — at least for the sake of argument — for Huckabee, the personable former Arkansas governor who also spent a good bit of his career as a Southern Baptist preacher.

I always thought that Huckabee was the logical candidate for religious conservatives — the next step in the progression. If you want to put God in the public square, why not get a preacher to do it? Eliminate the middleman — or men.

© 2007 MSNBC Interactive
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17149388/page/1/
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17149388/page/2/

[Linda_D]

And some RW media mavens like to claim that Democrats "pander" to special interests!

ROFLMAO.

[FisherRd]

And some RW media mavens like to claim that Democrats "pander" to special interests!

ROFLMAO.

They do pander to special interests. It's not a claim, it's a fact.

Name a group that doesn't.
Also, let's not pretend that pandering to the bible crowd is exclusive to the right. Granted they are better at it than the Dems, but it's not like the Dems aren't trying.

[speaker]

fisher rd;

"Also, let's not pretend that pandering to the bible crowd is exclusive to the right. Granted they are better at it than the Dems, but it's not like the Dems aren't trying."

You have to be kidding.

[Linda_D]

Also, let's not pretend that pandering to the bible crowd is exclusive to the right. Granted they are better at it than the Dems, but it's not like the Dems aren't trying.

Please name a Democrat who has run for national office in the last twenty years who's been endorsed by Falwell, Robertson or Dobson.

[leftWNYbecauseofBS]

Please name a Democrat who has run for national office in the last twenty years who's been endorsed by Falwell, Robertson or Dobson.

You are correct that a Dem has not looked for an endorsement from the right. But are you saying that Dem candidates do not spend time on the church circuit.

You have Christians who mostly go right.

But what about the Jews and the Baptists. Where do they vote in most cases? Do you think they do not have visits by "leaders" during the election circus.

Come on, Linda. We may have a separation of Church and State but the ideology of religions reaches into political territory.

Do you not think that synagogues around the US do not pay attention to foreign policy in regards to Israel.

Do you think that Baptists churches do not support leaders who effect its congregation.


EVERY CHURCH HAS AN AGENDA. EVERY CHURCH HAS POWER IN ELECTIONS. It is just the Christian right is a big vote getter. It is the equaliser to Union voting on the left.


PS- Good to have you back. You have be quite for a couple of days.

[FisherRd]

Please name a Democrat who has run for national office in the last twenty years who's been endorsed by Falwell, Robertson or Dobson.

Who said anything about endorsements? Where's the disconnect on this site? Did I skip the section titled "Ignore what was written, just supply somebody the position you want them to take" when I signed up here?
I said they pander to the bible crowd.
Perhaps you will believe this lib rag?
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articl...NG05M44301.DTL

All politicians pander.

[speaker]

We're discussing pandering.

"GOP leaders battle for support from the Three Kingmakers"

The Three Kingmakers have familiar names and big, traditional audiences on radio, television and now, the Internet: the Rev. Jerry Falwell, Dr. Pat Robertson and Dr. James Dobson. A younger generation (or two) is coming along, but these remain big brand names in the burgeoning world of all-Christian commerce.

Televangelist Pat Robertson is considering which candidate to throw his considerable support behind, but seems to be leaning toward Mitt Romney.

The Republicans’ first primary contest is next week, and it’s not in New Hampshire. It is in Orlando, at the annual meeting of the National Religious Broadcasters. GOP presidential candidates will be there to try to generate buzz that will translate into evangelical airtime — and support in the “base” in 2008...........
and so forth.
Big difference between pandering and having one's own faith.

[Micheal Joseph]

Please name a Democrat who has run for national office in the last twenty years who's been endorsed by Falwell, Robertson or Dobson.

What about Jummy Carter, who loved toting his Christianity.

Go back more than 20 yrs and you have Kennedy, as president, and kennedy that ran and was killed before winning.



Micheal

[leftWNYbecauseofBS]

At the end of the day, I feel that the vote has been taken away from the people. Maybe it never was with them but for my 12 years of voting I have never felt that one vote matters.

Today, politicians do not work for what the public wants. They work for the leaders of the public. Elections are one on endorsements. People do not vote for what they personally want, they vote what the society they are most attached to wants.

Think about it.

Church, Unions, ACLU, NOW, Pro Life, Pro Choice, NAAACP just to name a few. These groups represent the voting block. It is only a game a math.

So people who dislike the left blame the "Crazy Christians" as interfering in politics. People on the right blame the "Stubborn Unions" as interfering in politics.

It is what it is. Don't hate the player...hate the game.

[FisherRd]

Speaker,
Was your post directed at me? If so, I get it. That's why I said both sides pander. The Dems and the Reps. Linda was asking about endorsements, which I clearly didn't mention.

To act as if the Dems aren't courting the religious vote and positioning themselves as religious, moral, etc is a blatant lie.
As I said, the Dems just aren't as good at it as the Reps. It's not from lack of trying. If Hilary or Obama could get Falwell's vote they'd jump at the chance. Hilary may even kill for it...again.

I heard John Kerry was wearing a cross under that starched, un-used hunting gear back in 2004.

[FisherRd]

I guess I should mention that I think pandering to the fundies is a bad idea regardless of who does it. I'm conservative, but not religious in the least (even though I did catholic grammar school, high school, and University).
Religion is something IMO that is too personal to fit into a specific box. The pre-packaged stuff isn't for me.

[speaker]

Speaker,
Was your post directed at me? If so, I get it. That's why I said both sides pander. The Dems and the Reps. Linda was asking about endorsements, which I clearly didn't mention.

To act as if the Dems aren't courting the religious vote and positioning themselves as religious, moral, etc is a blatant lie.
As I said, the Dems just aren't as good at it as the Reps. It's not from lack of trying. If Hilary or Obama could get Falwell's vote they'd jump at the chance. Hilary may even kill for it...again.

I heard John Kerry was wearing a cross under that starched, un-used hunting gear back in 2004.

Yes, fisher, I was talking to you. The Democrats have not tried, and would not try, to use a religious base to kick off a campaign. No, you really don't seem to get it.

I honestly don't know what this means;

I heard John Kerry was wearing a cross under that starched, un-used hunting gear back in 2004.

[/QUOTE]

[steven]

Below is the full article.

Do not post news articles in there entirety on the board please