{"id":10,"date":"2008-03-10T13:05:51","date_gmt":"2008-03-10T13:05:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/stevenwaldman\/2008\/03\/mccain-is-inept-pandering-to-r.html"},"modified":"2008-03-10T13:05:51","modified_gmt":"2008-03-10T13:05:51","slug":"mccain-is-inept-pandering-to-r","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2008\/03\/mccain-is-inept-pandering-to-r.html","title":{"rendered":"McCain’s Inept Pandering to Religious Conservatives"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s sort of fun watching John McCain try to suck up to the religious right \u2013 because he\u2019s just so bad<\/em> at it.
\nTake John Hagee. McCain was no doubt told that Hagee is a popular and influential Christian leader. He figured this is exactly the kind of person he needs to appeal to \u201cevangelical Christians.\u201d
\nBut most evangelical leaders view Hagee as out of the mainstream. It\u2019s not just his views on Catholics; most evangelicals have been shying away from anti-Catholic rhetoric for a few decades now. It\u2019s also that Hagee subscribes to points of theology outside the evangelical mainstream. He\u2019s a believer in \u201cprosperity Gospel\u201d which states that poverty is a curse, resulting in part from one’s own lack of faith (and alternatively that through faith you can gain prosper mightily, which indicates he’s a man of very deep faith as he pays himself more than $1 million a year in salary<\/a>).
\nThe second is that Jews can get salvation without accepting Christ because of their original covenant with God, which bucks basic protestant theology.<\/a>
\nPutting aside the merits of either argument, neither represents mainstream evangelical thought. Hagee certainly does have many fans in the evangelical world, but there are many others who would get you a broader range of evangelicals support without alienating the largest swing vote (Catholics).
\nThis isn\u2019t the first sign that McCain is inept at courting the religious right. In his interview with Beliefnet<\/a> he first said he wouldn\u2019t have a Muslim in the cabinet (a spot-on appeal to religious conservatives) and then retracted it. And when asked whether the Constitution envisioned a Christian nation, he said yes. Every conservative politician schooled in how to court conservatives knows that the safe way to say it is that \u201cAmerica was a Christian nation\u201d or \u201cfounded on Judeo-Christian values.\u201d The first is defensible as a demographic matter; it was mostly Christian. The second signals you\u2019re one of the club without being so specific you scare people. But unschooled in the art, McCain went farther than most by claiming that the Constitution guaranteed a Christian nation, which is patently absurd.
\nPerhaps he should go back to calling religious conservative leaders \u201cagents of intolerance.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s sort of fun watching John McCain try to suck up to the religious right \u2013 because he\u2019s just so bad at it. Take John Hagee. McCain was no doubt told that Hagee is a popular and influential Christian leader. He figured this is exactly the kind of person he needs to appeal to \u201cevangelical…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"yoast_head":"\nMcCain's Inept Pandering to Religious Conservatives - Steven Waldman<\/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\/stevenwaldman\/2008\/03\/mccain-is-inept-pandering-to-r.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"McCain's Inept Pandering to Religious Conservatives - Steven Waldman\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"It\u2019s sort of fun watching John McCain try to suck up to the religious right \u2013 because he\u2019s just so bad at it. 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He's also the author of the Founding Faith: Politics, Providence, and the Birth of Religious Freedom in America, which has been published by Random House. Before co-founding Beliefnet in 1999, Waldman was a political journalist, serving as National Editor of U.S. News & World Report and National Correspondent for Newsweek. 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