American Values

The Politico reports that right-wing leaders are none-too-concerned about reports that Fred Thompson lobbied for an abortion-rights group. Gary Bauer says it is a "nonissue" and Tony Perkins says he's "really not" concerned and that the issue "is becoming so old.”

As we noted a few months ago, Gary Bauer has somehow managed to magically distance himself from his ties to John McCain’s campaign to such an extent that he is now routinely quoted discussing McCain’s current difficulties making in-roads with the Right.

For instance, Bauer made an appearance in a recent McClatchy article on McCain’s faith:

McCain "seems to have a difficulty in discussing it in terms that people relate to," said Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, a leading conservative evangelical organization. "I think people want a sense of where someone stands in their relationship with the Lord. I think George Bush was able to do that in the way he communicated, using terms that evangelicals are familiar with."

…

Perkins and Gary Bauer, key players in advancing the Christian conservative agenda in Washington, said they knew virtually nothing about McCain's religious life.

So Bauer now claims to know “virtually nothing” about McCain’s faith?  That certainly didn’t seem to be much of an obstacle when he endorsed him back in 2000 or went on “Hannity and Colmes” to flack for him:

But that whole speech was an attempt to appeal to members of the Christian Coalition by saying over and over again, "I am pro-life. I'm pro-family. I want to stop abortion. I want to stop the gay rights movement. Here's my own personal faith," et cetera, et cetera.

The speech in question was McCain’s infamous “agents of intolerance” speech - which Bauer played a role in drafting, by the way – where McCain also declared:

This is my faith, the faith that unites and never divides, the faith that bridges unbridgeable gaps in humanity. That is my religious faith and it is the faith I want my party to serve, and the faith I hold in my country. It is the faith that we are all equal and endowed by our creator with unalienable rights to life liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It is the faith I would die to defend.

Maybe the two never discussed their faith in-depth back in 2000, but that didn’t stop Bauer from proudly endorsing and defending McCain in his campaign against George W. Bush.  Yet seven years later,  Bauer seems to have completely forgotten all about it.  

Janice Rogers Brown “gets it … she drives the liberal media nuts!” writes Bauer.

Last month, Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention declared Rudy Giuliani’s campaign for president doomed, citing the former New York mayor’s reputation as a supporter of gay rights and a woman’s right to choose. He told The Hill that “If [Giuliani] wins, he’ll do so without social conservatives” – a result Land considered impossible. But less than two weeks later, Giuliani garnered a warm reception at the Conservative Political Action Conference, where he side-stepped social wedge issues and emphasized his supposedly Reagan-like leadership qualities in the context of 9/11. Conservative columnist Bob Novak declared Giuliani “the big winner here,” and he came in second to Mitt Romney in the CPAC straw poll. Unlike Romney, noted Novak, “Giuliani had not stacked the crowd with supporters,” a strategy that casts doubt on Romney’s first-place showing. And Giuliani continues to top polls of primary voters.

According to Novak, “Some activists expressed dismay that so many conservatives would cheer Giuliani without even making him offer anything for the Right” – apparently flying in the face of what every other Republican candidate has been doing for the past few months. But it’s still early in the campaign. Giuliani is scheduled to speak at Pat Robertson’s Regent University next month, and the televangelist himself has declared that the former mayor “did a super job running the city of New York and I think he'd make a good president.” Last year, he helped raise money for Ralph Reed, an unsuccessful candidate for Georgia lieutenant governor who is better known as the former head of the Christian Coalition and one of the seminal organizers of the Religious Right in the late 80s and 90s.

And recently, he has been making promises to the far Right on an issue that could be seen as a calculated revision of his abortion position: judges. “On the federal judiciary I would want judges who are strict constructionists because I am,” he announced in South Carolina. And he offered specific praise for right-wing members of the Supreme Court: “I think those are the kinds of justices I would appoint -- Scalia, Alito and Roberts.” Such statements fall short of the ham-handed pandering of long-shot candidate Rep. Duncan Hunter (“If any judicial candidate comes before me and can look at a sonogram … and not see valuable life, then I will not appoint him,” said Hunter to applause at CPAC), but they do echo almost exactly the words President George W. Bush deployed when he was campaigning for the office.