McCain Extends His Outreach, but Evangelicals Are Still Wary

NY Times ^ | 6/9/08 | MICHAEL LUO

[Dawnsblood]

Lori Viars, an evangelical activist in Warren County, Ohio, essentially put her life on hold in the fall of 2004 to run a phone bank for President Bush. Her efforts helped the president’s ambitious push to turn out evangelicals and win that critical swing state in a close election.

But Ms. Viars, who is among a cluster of socially conservative activists in Ohio being courted by Senator John McCain’s campaign through regular e-mail messages, is taking a wait-and-see attitude for now toward Mr. McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee.

“I think a lot of us are in a holding pattern,” said Ms. Viars, who added that she wanted to see whom Mr. McCain picked for his running mate.

Ms. Viars’s hesitation illustrates what remains one of Mr. McCain’s biggest challenges as he faces a general election contest with Senator Barack Obama: a continued wariness toward him among evangelicals and other Christian conservatives, a critical voting bloc for Republicans that could stay home in the fall or at least be decidedly unenthusiastic in their efforts to get out the vote.

To address this, Mr. McCain’s campaign has been ramping up its outreach to evangelicals over the last month, preparing a budget and a strategic plan for turning them out in 18 battleground states this fall.

The campaign has been peppering over 600 influential grass-roots and national leaders in the evangelical movement with regular e-mail messages — highlighting, for example, Mr. McCain’s statement criticizing a May 15 decision by the California Supreme Court overturning the state’s ban on same-sex marriage, or his recent speech on his judicial philosophy. It has also held briefings for small groups of conservative leaders before key speeches.

[shrinkermd]

Reading this article and then the posts tells me one thing. Hardly anyone has really tried to understand McCain’s strategy and effort in this matter.

Governor Tim Pawlenty (Mn) is a member of the Woodale Baptist Church in Edina, Minnesota. It is the biggest mega-church in Minnesota. It’s pastor, Leith Anderson, is President of the national Evangelical association.

This is one hidden virtue that Pawlenty brings to the VP table.

[jmaroneps37]

Evangelicals are not going to vote for barack mcgovern. They KNOW they almost elected algore in 2000 because their delicate sensibilities were offended over his dwi arrest and they stayed home. They are smart enough to realize what is on the table.