Sure, tonight’s Compassion Forum in at Messiah College featuring Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton is being sponsored by a progressive group, Faith in Public Life. But the group says John McCain’s decision not to participate is not for lack its of trying. “Our allies had conversations at the highest levels of the McCain campaign,” says Katie Barge, Faith in Public Life’s director of communications strategy. “We had received an initially positive response.”

“We’re not holding a grudge at all—we are still hopefully that [McCain] actually comes and are keeping lines of communication open with the McCain campaign,” Barge said in an interview late last week. “I will take them at their word that there’s a scheduling conflict.”
God-o-Meter, for its part, is more dubious. Given McCain’s troubles with evangelicals over both his positions and his reticence about discussing his own faith, wouldn’t this forum give him the chance to open up about his faith before an audience that’s less hostile than his party’s own base?

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