{"id":40,"date":"2007-10-01T23:53:42","date_gmt":"2007-10-01T23:53:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/godometer\/2007\/10\/dobson-co-mull-3rdparty-candid.html"},"modified":"2007-10-01T23:53:42","modified_gmt":"2007-10-01T23:53:42","slug":"dobson-co-mull-3rdparty-candid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/2007\/10\/dobson-co-mull-3rdparty-candid.html","title":{"rendered":"Dobson &amp; Co. Mull 3rd-Party Candidate"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As January&#8217;s Iowa caucuses inch ever closer, Focus on the Family&#8217;s James Dobson is in takedown mode. Just over a week ago, God-o-Meter watched him <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/godometer\/2007\/09\/dobson-on-thompson-not-for-me.html\">throw a wet blanket on Fred Thompson<\/a>. This weekend, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.worldnetdaily.com\/news\/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=57908\">he reportedly drove <\/a>600 miles from Focus&#8217;s Colorado Springs headquarters to Salt Lake City to promote the idea that the Christian Right should <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2007\/10\/01\/us\/politics\/01evangelicals.html?_r=1&amp;adxnnl=1&amp;oref=slogin&amp;adxnnlx=1191298471-QEAzdaYSA8ddNHwLJ0HI1w\">consider pushing a third-party candidate<\/a> at a top-secret gathering of conservative Christian activists. Dobson and others promoted the plan as a contingency should the pro-choice, pro-gay rights Rudy Giuliani clinch the GOP presidential nomination. Sure, polls show rank-and-file evangelicals <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/godometer\/2007\/09\/giuliani-still-leads-among-eva.html\"> backing Giuliani <\/a>for the moment. But Dobson may be looking to teach the GOP a lesson on Election Day 2008 by dampening evangelical turnout enough to deprive Giuliani of the White House. And God-o-Meter has learned that Dobson wasn&#8217;t the only VIP at this weekend&#8217;s conservative confab in Salt Lake. Mitt Romney showed up, too, trying to capitalize on continuing evangelical disillusionment over the GOP field by making another pitch for their support.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><br \/>\n3<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As January&#8217;s Iowa caucuses inch ever closer, Focus on the Family&#8217;s James Dobson is in takedown mode. Just over a week ago, God-o-Meter watched him throw a wet blanket on Fred Thompson. This weekend, he reportedly drove 600 miles from Focus&#8217;s Colorado Springs headquarters to Salt Lake City to promote the idea that the Christian&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":50,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-40","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rudy-giuliani"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Dobson &amp; Co. Mull 3rd-Party Candidate - 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\/10\/dobson-co-mull-3rdparty-candid.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Dobson &amp; Co. Mull 3rd-Party Candidate - God-O-Meter\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"As January&#8217;s Iowa caucuses inch ever closer, Focus on the Family&#8217;s James Dobson is in takedown mode. Just over a week ago, God-o-Meter watched him throw a wet blanket on Fred Thompson. This weekend, he reportedly drove 600 miles from Focus&#8217;s Colorado Springs headquarters to Salt Lake City to promote the idea that the Christian&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/2007\/10\/dobson-co-mull-3rdparty-candid.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"God-O-Meter\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2007-10-01T23:53:42+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"dgilgoff\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Dobson &amp; Co. Mull 3rd-Party Candidate - God-O-Meter","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/2007\/10\/dobson-co-mull-3rdparty-candid.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Dobson &amp; Co. Mull 3rd-Party Candidate - God-O-Meter","og_description":"As January&#8217;s Iowa caucuses inch ever closer, Focus on the Family&#8217;s James Dobson is in takedown mode. Just over a week ago, God-o-Meter watched him throw a wet blanket on Fred Thompson. This weekend, he reportedly drove 600 miles from Focus&#8217;s Colorado Springs headquarters to Salt Lake City to promote the idea that the Christian&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/2007\/10\/dobson-co-mull-3rdparty-candid.html","og_site_name":"God-O-Meter","article_published_time":"2007-10-01T23:53:42+00:00","author":"dgilgoff","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/2007\/10\/dobson-co-mull-3rdparty-candid.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/2007\/10\/dobson-co-mull-3rdparty-candid.html","name":"Dobson &amp; Co. Mull 3rd-Party Candidate - God-O-Meter","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/#website"},"datePublished":"2007-10-01T23:53:42+00:00","dateModified":"2007-10-01T23:53:42+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/#\/schema\/person\/b7e97412c87d7a3b866e9972cc090db4"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/2007\/10\/dobson-co-mull-3rdparty-candid.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/2007\/10\/dobson-co-mull-3rdparty-candid.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/2007\/10\/dobson-co-mull-3rdparty-candid.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Dobson &amp; Co. Mull 3rd-Party Candidate"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/","name":"God-O-Meter","description":"A scientific measure of God-talk in the elections","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/#\/schema\/person\/b7e97412c87d7a3b866e9972cc090db4","name":"dgilgoff","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/858\/858da2927809a8352512cd24712c020cx96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/858\/858da2927809a8352512cd24712c020cx96.jpg","caption":"dgilgoff"},"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/author\/dgilgoff"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/50"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}