This story argues that the old guard leaders of the Religious Right no longer carry the clout they once did as evidenced by Mike Huckabee’s success in spite of their efforts (or lack thereof).
So only after Fred and Rudy and Mitt have dropped out, and McCain has all but mathematically sealed the G.O.P. nomination, does Focus on the Family founder Dr. James Dobson come out and endorse Mike Huckabee as “our best remaining choice for President of the United States,” now that it can’t possibly make a difference. Given how this season has unfolded, there is something beautifully appropriate about that.
Back at the end of September, after Dobson and his disciples had their private meeting to publicly threaten a third party run if the G.O.P. went with a social liberal like Giuliani, I asked Richard Land, the Southern Baptists’ political ambassador, what was the problem with Huckabee, since Land understands these weather systems better than most.
Here was a candidate that you would have thought the social conservative leadership could embrace without reservation, a fresh, appealing, Southern Baptist preacher-pol who didn’t believe in evolution, whose wife (by covenant marriage, no less) has slept under bridges with homeless people, and who was more consistently pro-life than anyone in the field. So what was Paul Weyrich doing backing Romney and Pat Robertson endorsing Rudy and the National Right to Life committee supporting Thompson? “I’ve known Mike a long time,” said Land. “I think Mike would be a fine President. But he’s the one who has to close that deal. He has to convince significant numbers of Americans that he’d be a fine President and that he can beat Hillary Clinton.”
In other words, he was on his own, as far as the religious right leaders were concerned (Don Wildmon, head of the American Family Association, being an exception.) And that’s why what has happened in the months since has exposed many of those same leaders, once and for all, as emperors with no clothes.
