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...........McCain thanked the audience “for your commitment to Judeo-Christian values upon which this nation was founded.” He said: “I am a conservative. My record shows I am a conservative.” On abortion, he said “the rights of the unborn should be respected.” Judges, he said, “should not legislate from the bench.”
But such speeches, even those as well attended as this one, are not what is most important in winning the support of alliance members who will attend the caucuses Thursday night. What probably matters more is the “2008 Iowa Christian Alliance Presidential Caucus Voters Guide,” which was distributed in churches around the state. It gives the candidates’ stands on 10 issues, based on their response to questionnaires.
Most of McCain’s answers would win him admission to any right-wing club in the nation.
He supports repeal of Roe v. Wade, opposes ratification of the Kyoto treaty as well as extension of federal hate crime laws to include sexual orientation. He is even against a proposal that exists so far only in the minds of paranoid ultraconservatives—a “NAFTA superhighway” running from Canada to Mexico.
But on one issue of particular importance in the world of the religious right, McCain split with the Iowa Christian Alliance: gay marriage. In Iowa, a county judge overturned an Iowa law banning same-sex marriages, although he later suspended his ruling pending an appeal to the Iowa Supreme Court. This prompted a statement by alliance President Scheffler and Morris Hurd, calling for a U.S. constitutional amendment banning such unions: “… Again we see that the judges view themselves as arrogant aristocrats who know so much more than the rest of us. ... In recent years, Biblical standards are almost completely abandoned and ignored............”
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