Posted on 02/01/2008 2:07:00 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
While John McCain has risen to the top of the heap among contenders for the Republican presidential nomination, Focus on the Family founder James Dobson remains adamant that he will not support McCain’s bid for the White House.
Dobson, one of the nation’s most influential evangelical Christians, declared more than a year ago that he wouldn't support McCain under any circumstances, saying McCain didn't support traditional marriage values.
A Dobson spokesman told the New York Times’ David Kirkpatrick Wednesday that he stood by that position, and as a matter of conscience could never vote for the Arizona Senator.
According to the paper, Dobson is joined by a slew of other prominent conservatives who oppose McCain on a number of issues:
Talk radio host Mark Levin urged visitors to the National Review’s Web site to “rally for Romney” to ward off a McCain win, saying: “Conservatives need to act now, before it is too late.”
Talker Rush Limbaugh told listeners on Thursday: “McCain is in a lot of these places not actually the Republican candidate. He is the candidate of enough Republicans, but [also] independents and moderates and probably even some liberals.”
Pat Toomey, president of the anti-tax organization Club for Growth, said in comments reported by the New York Times: “I have yet to see McCain make any attempts to reach out to free market conservatives.”
Conservatives fault McCain for voting against President Bush’s tax cuts and a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage, and for supporting embryonic stem cell research, looser immigration rules and stricter environmental regulations.
Conservatives were particularly irked when McCain made a deal with Democrats to break a deadlock on judicial nominations, according to the Times.
Anger over that compromise was rekindled this week when Wall Street Journal columnist John Fund wrote that McCain had privately criticized Bush’s Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito because “he wore his conservatism on his sleeve.” The McCain campaign denied that report.
Following McCain successes in early primary states, however, other conservatives are beginning to warm up to his campaign:
Americans for Tax Reform President Grover Norquist, who previously opposed a McCain nomination, said: “He has moved in the right direction strongly and forcefully on taxes.”
Former McCain foe Tony Perkins, a prominent Christian conservative, told the Times: “I have no residual issue with John McCain,” adding the candidate needed to “better communicate” his stand on social issues.
Richard Land, an official with the South Baptist Convention, agreed, noting that McCain “is strongly pro-life.” He said: “When I hear Rush Limbaugh say that a McCain nomination would destroy the Republican Party, what I want to say to Rush is, ‘You need to get out of the studio more and talk to real people.’”
Dr. Dobson has made it a point to be a politically active Christian leader and has never hesitated speaking his mind or opinion on the importance of his own personal involvement with our nation’s politics.
I admire him for taking a stand in the public arena and how his organization helps Christians, who happen to listen to his programming, be and stay informed.
good points
I’ll put the tinfoil away now :^)
“With Al Queda, it’s much better to fight the enemy oversees than fight them in my own country.”
Very true, but many do not realize that we will be fighting Al-Qaeda right here at home because we allow Muslim immigration. The Al-Qaeda terrorists our troops kill overseas are merely dumb cannon fodder - the real dangerous members lurk right here at home.
How well of a security background investigation have been done on any incoming Muslim? Their abbrasive attitude against American society is only an indication of horrific things to come.
The election is over. Whoever the Dems decide upon will be the next president.
The alternative, of course, is to stop filing as a non-profit, and then his freedom of speech would not be “voluntarily” restricted. I agree, this does have an evil effect.
I don’t see how these good kinds of religious-based service institutions could survive without their non-profit status, not with the U.S. tax structure as it is.
Of course Limbaugh thinks about ratings. No ratings, no show. However, I think there’s another reason he avoids endorsing candidates. Limbaugh is a target, and the reason the democrats want the fairness doctrine returned is to get rid of Limbaugh. They don’t give a d*mn about Hannity, Michael Savage, Medved or any of the others. They want to destroy Limbaugh. He cannot make his show a three hour commercial for a single candidate. The rules are different for him.
Even if that stand gave us Huckabee and paved the way for a McCain nomination, eh? Count me out on giving him that pass.
Frankly, in my eyes Dobson has lost so much credibility in this primary I’ll probably never take much of anything he says into consideration again.
Dobson makes me sick. Fred Thompson failed to kiss his ass so he attacked him and turned may stupid evangelicals (not that all evangelicals are stupid) against Fred, Now it looks like we may be stuck with McCain. I hope Dobson is proud of himself.
I am not sure that part is true. In head to head polling, McCain is overwhelmingly more popular than Romney among Republicans.
He's against McCain, and has clearly been. He was also against Thompson, and I believe with great reason, though my own personal reasons are different. IMO, he should have been behind Tancredo or Hunter, not Thompson all along. In any event, the fault of our choices do not lie at Dobson's feet: they lay with the GOP which is promoting nothing but RINOs.
The good doctor doesn't shy away from this at all. I was just pointing out that in this case, the law of unintended consequences caught him in a result he's probably not happy with, helping McCain in the roundabout way I delineated above.
Leni
You have it party correct, McCain does suck!
Good Dobson. Go vote for Hilary or Obama then. Just keep defending the counrty from gay cartoon characters and puppets, as it is you have lost most of your credibilitry with conservatives.
How can Fred Thompson be too liberal for Dobson, but Mitt is a staunch conservative.
All these loudmouth, so-called conservatives that are bashing McCain for being liberal, while supporting Mitt are delusional. Neither candidate is a prototypical conservative, but both are much better than any of the democrats.
Did you read what Ann Coulter said today? In case you haven’t noticed, there’s more than a few of us who despise the very idea of John McCain as the Republican nominee. I’m not exactly alone in my opinion. Is supporting John McCain the only way to show ones FR or conservative bonafides?
If you think I’d like to live under four years of the Banshee, think again. But McCain will destroy the Republican party for two or three generations and relegate conservatism to the political wilderness. If the party thinks they can win without the conservative base, using just the RINO independents and moderates, then conservativism will be a movement without a party any longer. I’m beside myself at the prospect.
Yes indeed. Conservatives have been marginalized in the Republican party. At least in this coming election. We have been relagated to the back of the bus. It is clear that McCain is winning among Republican primary voters by a clear margine, just as Shwartznegger has moved completely left in California.
“They can’t win anything by themselves, they are not numerous enough to call all the shots, and by adopting their current “rule or ruin” strategy are about to become completely insignificant.”
Well put. The ego of some of these wannabe “king-makers” is astounding.
Coulter is an embarrassment to conservatism. She is probably closet communist. She will vote for a democrat over McCain. Maybe her liberal Hollywood friends gave her the idea. After all, real conservatives are friends with Holloywood low lifes that bash our country and military.
The only thing that one could say, perhaps, about Dobson is: it might have been more prudent for him to make his comments against Thompson at a later date. But, as we don’t know his conscience, he may have felt led to come out and make a statement at the time he did for particular reasons (and, no doubt, had he not made comment at that very time, that could have been yet a different reason to criticize, in still other quarters, later on).
Good for him? Dobson had a hand in making this election process a debacle. Since listening to him this past year I now could care less what King Dobson has to say.
Right on, its time to show the Republican party that the days of accepting RINO’s are over.
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