{"id":205,"date":"2007-12-30T21:03:39","date_gmt":"2007-12-30T21:03:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/godometer\/2007\/12\/with-help-from-brownback-mccai.html"},"modified":"2007-12-30T21:03:39","modified_gmt":"2007-12-30T21:03:39","slug":"with-help-from-brownback-mccai","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/2007\/12\/with-help-from-brownback-mccai.html","title":{"rendered":"With Help From Brownback, McCain Redoubles Christian Right Outreach"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"brownbackmccain.jpg\"Launching a new \u201cCatholics for McCain\u201d group and rolling out new leadership for his \u201cIowans of Faith for McCain\u201d group<\/a> last week, broadcasting a television ad about bonding with a prison guard over a cross as a POW<\/a>, and airing recent ads on Iowa Christian radio, the presidential candidate who famously denounced the Christian Right\u2019s leaders as \u201cagents of intolerance\u201d in his 2000 White House bid is making an 11th-hour appeal for the movement\u2019s support.
\nPerhaps more than anyone, the person responsible for John McCain\u2019s turnabout is Kansas Senator Sam Brownback, the evangelical-turned-Catholic religious conservative who endorsed McCain shortly after ending his own presidential campaign in October. In recent weeks, Brownback and advisors from his defunct campaign have counseled McCain and his aides about stepping up conservative Christian outreach and have arranged meetings between the campaign and evangelical Christian leaders.
\n\u201cThey are redoubling their efforts,\u201d Brownback said of the McCain camp\u2019s religious outreach effort in an interview on Saturday. \u201cFor quite a while, they just didn\u2019t think it was their best zone of opportunity, and then we pushed them a lot and they\u2019ve seen that McCain has a message that resonates in that community.\u201d
\n\u201cI don\u2019t think they\u2019d been very aggressive on reaching out the faith community\u2026 or showing respect for faith and issues of faith,\u201d Brownback added about McCain and his team. \u201cMore than anything, he had to show respect for authentic faith, and you\u2019re seeing that now in his language.\u201d
\nThough McCain has been banking his campaign on a strong finish in New Hampshire, an uptick in support from evangelicals and other religious conservatives could improve his fortunes in early states like Iowa and South Carolina.
\nBrownback said his own efforts on McCain\u2019s behalf include talking up his candidacy in a conversation with Focus on the Family founder James Dobson, an influential evangelical who has said he won\u2019t support McCain because of the Senator\u2019s opposition to a constitutional amendment banning same sex marriage. Brownback also urged McCain to attend a recent meeting with Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, a conservative Christian advocacy group in Washington, DC.
\n\u201cHe does have a strong record on the life issue and I think I still see him as a very viable candidate who\u2019s making a comeback, working aggressively, and has staked out the right position on the new Iraq surge policy,\u201d Perkins, who had previously been critical of McCain, told Beliefnet this month after meeting with the Arizona Senator. \u201cSo if you\u2019re a \u2018security voter\u2019 concerned with radical Islam, you have more than just the choice of Rudy Giuliani, with all his baggage on social issues.\u201d
\nOf the roughly 50 activists comprising the new leadership of the Iowans of Faith for McCain group, nearly half are former Brownback backers. Brownback said the McCain campaign is preparing to announce an endorsement from an influential religious figure this week.
\nMcCain\u2019s 2000 \u201cagents of intolerance\u201d remarks about Moral Majority co-founder Jerry Falwell and then-Christian Broadcasting Network chief Pat Robertson and the Senator’s opposition to amending the constitution to ban gay marriage aren\u2019t the only reasons he\u2019s been a thorn in the side of the Christian Right. The movement\u2019s leaders have also decried the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law, which placed limits on the organizations those leaders operate. They also bristled at McCain\u2019s participation in the \u201cGang of 14\u201d senators that struck a 2005 deal over President George W. Bush\u2019s judicial appointments that wound up averting a dramatic change in Senate rules. Branded \u201cthe nuclear option,\u201d conservatives had pushed the rules change to ensure that President Bush\u2019s judicial nominees received Senate floor votes.
\n\u201cThis has been rocky road for John, but there\u2019s been some regrets and some maturing on both sides,\u201d Brownback said. While Christian Right leaders \u201chave been unhappy about him in the past\u2026. they warm up to him when they start to look at the other candidates and check him against the others. They say, \u2018I\u2019ve been mad at John in the past but he\u2019s our best candidate.\u2019\u201d
\nBrownback said his chief arguments for McCain among social conservatives are his strong anti-abortion rights record in the Senate, his electability\u2014ensuring more conservative appointments to the Supreme Court\u2014his foreign policy experience, and his support for the Iraq war. \u201cThere has been resistance to John,\u201d Brownback said. \u201cBut now it\u2019s time to decide and stick with it.\u201d
\nThe McCain campaign did not respond to requests for comment about its stepped-up religious outreach effort.<\/p>\n


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Launching a new \u201cCatholics for McCain\u201d group and rolling out new leadership for his \u201cIowans of Faith for McCain\u201d group last week, broadcasting a television ad about bonding with a prison guard over a cross as a POW, and airing recent ads on Iowa Christian radio, the presidential candidate who famously denounced the Christian Right\u2019s…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":50,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-205","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-john-mccain"],"yoast_head":"\nWith Help From Brownback, McCain Redoubles Christian Right Outreach - God-O-Meter<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/2007\/12\/with-help-from-brownback-mccai.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"With Help From Brownback, McCain Redoubles Christian Right Outreach - 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