Mike Cromartie, vice president at the Ethics and Public Policy Center said James Dobson’s decision to not vote for Sen. John McCain was premature:
Politics is about making choices between relative goods and lesser evils and not about having perfect choices. It’s a wasted vote on Dr. Dobson’s part. It’s irresponsible on his part to give that kind of leadership. He should sit down with McCain and see if he can be persuasive. What he should be saying is, “I’ll wait to see what the candidates have to offer.” It’s premature to emphatically say, “I’ll never vote for anybody.”
Late Tuesday night, results looked bright for McCain:
It looks like McCain is going to be a candidate. The things to ask are how many meetings is it going to take and what kind of actions are going to be needed for social conservatives to rally behind McCain against an either Clinton or Obama ticket. This is unusual for the Republican Party to have a candidate that’s so not particularly admired by social conservatives. The story really is going to be how McCain is going to win the base.
Cromartie compared McCain with the first President Bush:
George H.W. Bush did not have all that great of a relationship with social conservatives. The reason that he picked Dan Quayle was Dan Quayle was seen as someone they can trust. It didn’t help the ticket that much but it did help satisfy social conservatives. I guess if I was going to predict, it would be a McCain-Huckabee ticket just for that reason.
Cromartie told me what he thinks candidates will need to do to galvanize evangelical support.
If the evangelical agenda is broadening, as it broadens, it doesn’t mean it’s eliminating convictions it previously held. You can broaden the agenda to be concerned about poverty and AIDS in Africa and the state of the environment, but it doesn’t mean you cancel out your concerns about the life issues, about ethical issues, or the marriage issues. It takes more than scintillating rhetoric to convince voters to vote for you. It means certain promises about policies that you will pursue.
