The Democratic Party has stolen the headlines on faith outreach and “God talk” during this 2008 campaign season but the Republican National Committee Deputy Chair Frank Donatelli tells The Brody File that is about to change. See his comments below:
“All I can say is that it will be aggressive. Senator McCain’s aides at all levels will be talking to pro-family groups. Senator McCain himself will engage with pro-family groups. The problem with the DNC outreach is the party that embraces abortion on demand and retreating in the face of our enemies I would think would have a great deal of difficulty reaching pro-family voters.”
“We are going to have a very aggressive program to reach out to religious voters whether they are Evangelical, Protestant, Catholic or whatever. That is a staple of our campaign because what we find is that the most religious voters certainly in terms of Church attendance tend to vote Republican more than the general public. There are a lot of voters there for us. The senator’s team has been meeting with these (pro-family) groups. He has conducted some meetings and he’ll continue to have such meetings. I think the test here is what we are saying in terms of issues. The issues that are of concern to religious voters namely winning the war on terror and appointing and supporting judges to the federal bench that will interpret the constitution and not make social policy, those are bedrock issues as far as Senator McCain is concerned. I believe that as the campaign goes on this will become more and more evident. We’ve got plenty of time here, lots of time for meetings and interaction and I just believe that as we go forward that the groups you’re talking about will become more and more comfortable with our campaign.”
Part of the concern among pro-family groups is that the social issues aren’t really the ones that get McCain excited. McCain is not known as a “leader” when it comes to these issues. Yes, he’s been a pretty reliable vote on the life issue (except on embryonic stem cell research) but how hard will he fight for parental notification laws, a fetal pain bill, etc? Will he stand on his presidential “soap box” and champion these issues? Probably not. President Bush took some heat inside pro-family circles when he pretty much gave lip service to pushing a federal marriage amendment (he gave a quick speech about it and that was pretty much it.)
When you combine McCain’s lack of appetite to engage on social issues with the fact that he’s the guy who pushed campaign finance reform (reviled by pro-family groups) and is against a federal marriage amendment plus he doesn’t really want to open up about his faith (run on sentence alert) , the RNC and the McCain camp would be very wise to be overly aggressive courting the Evangelical base. Of course they can’t pander either or they’ll be slammed by moderates. Tough job. I’m glad I’m just a blogger posting articles in my basement with my pajamas on.