Posted on 03/27/2015 5:19:27 AM PDT by xzins
Fearing that Republicans will ultimately nominate an establishment presidential candidate like Jeb Bush, leaders of the nation’s Christian right have mounted an ambitious effort to coalesce their support behind a single social-conservative contender months before the first primary votes are cast.
In secret straw polls and exclusive meetings from Iowa to California, the leaders are weighing the relative appeal and liabilities of potential standard-bearers like Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana and former Govs. Rick Perry of Texas and Mike Huckabee of Arkansas.
“There’s a shared desire to come behind a candidate,” said Tony Perkins, the president of the Family Research Council, a national lobbying group that opposes abortion and equal rights for gays.
“It would be early for a group of leaders to come out for a candidate, but not too early for the conversations to begin,” he said.
The efforts to coalesce behind an alternative candidate — in frequent calls, teleconferences and meetings involving a range of organizations, many of them with overlapping memberships — are premised on two articles of conservative faith: Republicans did not win the White House in the past two elections because their nominees were too moderate and failed to excite the party’s base. And a conservative alternative failed to win the nomination each time because voters did not unite behind a single champion in the primary fight.
This time, social conservatives vow, will be different. They plan to unify behind an anti-establishment candidate by summer or early fall, with the expectation that they will be able to overcome any fund-raising advantage of the Republican elite by exerting their own influence through right-wing talk radio and social media, and by mobilizing an army of like-minded small donors. “Conservatives smell blood in the water,” said Kellyanne Conway, a Republican pollster who has participated in the vetting. “They feel they’ve got the best shot to deny the establishment a place.”
Ms. Conway said the candidates seen as having potential to energize the party’s right wing would be invited to make their case before national groups of social conservatives in the coming weeks and months.
Richard Viguerie, the conservative direct-mail pioneer, said he was involved in the effort to rally behind a candidate so “we won’t go into this season divided six or eight different ways.”
“the leaders are weighing the relative appeal and liabilities of potential standard-bearers like Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana and former Govs. Rick Perry of Texas and Mike Huckabee of Arkansas.”
If those are the four they are considering, what is there to discuss? Two of them are known losers, so you can rule them out, and one of the other two isn’t running.
Obviously, the ones at the bottom aren’t as good as the ones at the top.
Rubio is far better than Jeb “muskrat alien love” and “common core” afficianado.
We don’t defeat Jeb by destroying our least favorite conservatives. Otherwise, we leave our field in a mess and an easy path to victory for the GOP-E. That’s been they game plan for 2 generations now. When will we ever catch on.
We defeat the GOP-E by having our candidates put forth their vision and picking the best one.
Right now that is Cruz. Like it or not, though, it takes money to run. And if a candidate can’t line up the cash, then they’re going to be hard pressed to win.
I don’t think Walker has tried appealing to the evangelical organizations like Jindal, Huckabee and Perry have.
Also they may have already settled on Cruz, so the others are included just to present the appearance that they are casting a broad net. Or that they are using it as a hook to get Walker to pay more attention to them, or extract concessions from the candidates.
IOW probably a lot of options for what’s happening behind the scenes.
Damn straight!
Which means the conservative vote will still be, at best, split between Cruz and Walker. And at worst divided among Cruz, Walker, Perry, and a host of others.
I think that's what Jeb is banking on.
The FRC MUST eliminate the Huckster from the list, if they want us to take him seriously
You’d think those annoying “diabetes cure” commercials he does on Limbaugh would be enough to torpedo him, LOL.
We have to do this, even if we don’t select Ted Cruz.
The most influential group of “selectors” is Rush, Sean, Glenn and Mark.
Rush has said nice things about Ted, but won’t commit to a single candidate. I’m sure Sean likes Ted, but I don’t see him committing early. Cruz is Beck’s favorite, with Paul a close second. And I think Cruz is Mark’s number one, as well.
Before Jeb gets close to dominating the primaries, these guys have an obligation to unite behind Ted.
Imagine them doing a press conference together. It would be one for the ages. The media would literally explode.
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