Evangelicals turn on Fred Thompson

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0907/6029.html

By: Jonathan Martin
Sep 26, 2007 04:26 PM EST

Thompson's refusal to back a nationwide ban on gay marriage has irritated potential supporters.

Fred Thompson is failing to meet expectations that he would rally widespread support from Christian conservatives, and he almost certainly will not receive a joint endorsement from the loose coalition of "pro-family" organizations, according to leaders of the movement.

Many religious conservatives, faced with a Republican primary top tier that lacked a true kindred spirit, initially looked to Thompson as a savior. But the former Tennessee senator has disappointed or just not sufficiently impressed the faith community since his formal campaign launch earlier this month.

While Christian conservatives once seemed willing to readily give Thompson the benefit of the doubt earlier this summer, when questions were raised about his lobbying for a pro-abortion-rights group, they are not willing to turn the other cheek anymore.

Even some on the religious right who remain sympathetic to Thompson are unhappy about his refusal to back a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, and were unpleasantly surprised by his confession that he doesn’t belong to or attend any church and won’t talk about his faith.

It is Thompson's stance on gay marriage that is likely to deny him any unified backing from the organizations that comprise the Arlington Group, the umbrella coalition of almost every major social conservative group in the GOP constellation.

"It was a real possibility," said Paul Weyrich, chairman of the Free Congress Foundation and one of the founders of the Arlington coalition. (Its first meeting, in 2002, took place in the Virginia suburb.)

But Weyrich said that after Thompson told members of the group this summer that he supports the Federal Marriage Amendment, the conservative leaders became concerned when they started seeing media reports indicating Thompson didn’t support the measure. Thompson came back again to make his pitch to the group this month and confirmed that, because of his federalist views, he would not back the amendment.

Thompson spokesman Todd Harris said his candidate believes marriage ought to be between one man and one woman and that he would support "a constitutional amendment that would bar judges at any level from reinterpreting existing laws and, through judicial activism, grant same-sex marriage."

But for religious conservatives, that’s not enough. "It’s just not going to happen now," Weyrich said of Arlington Group backing for Thompson, noting that "a lot of people who had intended to support him pulled back."

Tony Perkins, leader of the Family Research Council, said that "those initial issues were overlooked," alluding to the disclosure about Thompson’s lobbying for the National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association.

"But his position on the marriage amendment has given some pause," Perkins said.

Gary Bauer, the former presidential candidate and a leading Christian conservative, said many of his compatriots were taking an approach of "Let the marketplace choose which one ends up being the best candidate."

"I wouldn’t say that there’s a coalescing at all," Bauer observed, adding that "it may very well be that, in this cycle, there isn’t a coalescing."

"It’s a very fluid situation, and it’s possible that a very significant number of people will say, ‘I’m going to work with all of them and wait.’"

"All of them" except former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, that is.

A Thompson aide remained hopeful of corralling significant support among the GOP religious base. "Once the records of our opposition are further exposed, Sen. Thompson will have more appeal to Christian conservatives," the aide said. The other Republicans, said this aide, "are riddled with credibility issues."

But conversations with numerous social conservative leaders, both in key primary states and in Washington, reveal a movement deeply concerned about the prospect of Giuliani winning the nomination, but split over which candidate to get behind to try to derail the pro-abortion-rights and pro-gay-rights mayor. Six weeks ago, Thompson clearly appeared to be that consensus alternative.

Some Christian conservatives fear that if they don’t unite behind a single candidate, they may wind up enabling the success of a candidate, Giuliani, who not only opposes them on two core issues but whose personal life is anathema.

"I predict that if he does get the nomination, Republicans will lose," John Stemberger, an Orlando attorney and prominent Christian conservative leader in Florida, said of a potential matchup between Giuliani and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.). "When confronted with two liberal New Yorkers, both pro-abortion and pro-gay rights, [Christian conservatives] are going to vote for a third-party candidate."

Stemberger predicts that "the more people that learn about Rudy’s record on issues, he’s going to gradually dip in the polls."

But many Republicans have been saying the same thing for months, and, less than four months away from the Iowa caucuses, Giuliani’s poll numbers remain strong nationally and competitive in some of the key early states.

Murmurs about Thompson’s rocky rollout were amplified into shouts last week when a private e-mail sent by James Dobson, founder and chairman of Focus on the Family and perhaps the most influential Christian conservative in America today, was made public.

"Isn’t Thompson the candidate who is opposed to a constitutional amendment to protect marriage, believes there should be 50 different definitions of marriage in the U.S., favors McCain-Feingold, won’t talk at all about what he believes, and can’t speak his way out of a paper bag on the campaign trail?" Dobson asked in the message, obtained by The Associated Press.

"He has no passion, no zeal and no apparent ‘want to.’ And yet he is apparently the Great Hope that burns in the breasts of many conservative Christians? Well, not for me, my brothers. Not for me!"

James Muffett, head of the Michigan-based Citizens for Traditional Values and an original member of Pat Robertson’s 1988 presidential bid team, said the Dobson comments quickly found their way into his inbox and those of his fellow believers.

"I had a board member who was totally enamored with Thompson," Muffett explained in a conversation at the Mackinac Republican Leadership Conference. "But then he read Dobson’s message and said, ‘Oh, I better do some more research.’"

Iowa Christian Alliance President Steve Scheffler said Dobson "doesn’t speak for everybody" and points out that the movement is "not monolithic." But in a state that just saw a flurry of same-sex marriage ceremonies, thanks to a district judge in its largest county striking down the state law limiting marriage to one man and one woman, Scheffler indicated that the issue would be something of a litmus test.

"Support for a federal and state constitutional amendment is going to be very high on our priority list," he said.

While the marriage issue has been paramount, it’s not the only thing that has stuck in the craw of cultural conservatives since Thompson’s announcement.

While in the evangelical-heavy upstate region of South Carolina, Thompson said he typically only attends church when he’s back home visiting his mother in Tennessee and that he wasn’t comfortable discussing his faith.

The remarks have "generated a lot of discussion," said Oran Smith, head of the Palmetto Family Council, the pre-eminent social conservative organization in South Carolina. "It was the source of a little bit of head-scratching."

Michael Cromartie, an evangelical Christian and vice president of the Washington-based Ethics and Public Policy Center, agreed that Thompson’s comments about his church attendance weren’t "the smartest move."

"There are churches in McLean," Cromartie observed, alluding to Thompson’s home outside Washington.

But "Ronald Reagan really didn’t go to church, either," Cromartie added, "so that won’t be a disqualifying point."

Others in the conservative faith community raised the Reagan analogy. Stemberger, the Florida social conservative leader, pointed out that "Reagan didn’t go to church, his wife was controversial, he was from Hollywood, had some gay friends and a mixed record on the abortion issue."

Stemberger also pointed out that "Reagan had a certain Teflon where he could shed criticism," and the same goes for Thompson.

"Everybody is bashing him, but it doesn’t seem to be affecting him in the polls."

Richard Viguerie, the conservative direct-mail pioneer, said, however, that the only similarities between Thompson and the Gipper are stylistic.

"Reagan had that same image — but there was substance there," Viguerie said. "He had read the books we had read and been coming to our events for 25 years. We knew he was one of us, because he walked with us and surrounded himself with us."