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Saturday, September 8, 2007
Playing good cop, brimstone cop with the Georgia GOP
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The good cop, bad cop routine has been done too many times to provide anything but laughs on TV.
But in politics, it’s still rare enough to work.
Mike Huckabee, the Republican presidential candidate and former Arkansas governor, came to town over the weekend. It was his first campaign swing through the state.
Huckabee has a reputation as the nicest guy without money in the 2008 campaign — quick with a quip and a smile, inoffensive to a fault. The former Southern Baptist pastor gave a speech to Cobb County Republicans that could have been delivered, with its focus on taxation, fiscal responsibility and patriotism, to any crowd in the country.
Huckabee was the good cop.
The bad cop — better yet, the brimstone cop — was the Iowa chairman of the Huckabee campaign. Bob VanderPlaats is an evangelical politician from the western, more conservative side of Iowa — a former, unsuccessful candidate for governor.
In a booming voice, VanderPlaats spoke directly to the fears of conservative Christians who serve as the scandal-weary foot soldiers of the GOP in Georgia — a base embarrassed by Larry Craig’s restroom habits, out-of-control spending sanctioned by the Bush administration, and corrupting ties to Washington lobbyists.
You’ll never have to apologize for Huckabee, VanderPlaats argued. He told the crowd — think about this one, now — that he would trust Huckabee “with my wife, and I’d trust him with my four boys.”
“We want somebody who hates dishonest gain. No more smoke and mirrors — [candidates who] tell you one thing, do another thing, just to get your vote,” the man from Iowa said.
In the front row was Sadie Fields, chairman of the Georgia Christian Alliance. She was favorably impressed, but made no commitment. She’ll have a private conversation with Huckabee later this month.
With little cash, and with a quickly advancing primary schedule, dissatisfaction within the GOP’s evangelical base is Huckabee’s best shot at rising into the top tier of Republican candidates, now occupied by Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney, and — as of last week — Fred Thompson.
Thrice-married Giuliani supports abortion rights and civil unions for gays. Romney is Mormon — a high theological hurdle, particularly in the South. Many conservative Christians consider him a late-comer to the cause.
Thompson is still an unknown factor, but already is defending himself from charges that he worked for abortion rights interests as a lobbyist in 1990s. “It’s going to be hard for Fred Thompson to find his niche,” Fields said.
Unlike Huckabee, all three leading GOP candidates have substantial networks laying the groundwork in Georgia. But they only have slivers of public commitment from evangelical voters.
“There is this strong anti-establishment sentiment — almost a skepticism,” said Tim Echols, a Christian political activist who helped U.S. Rep. Paul Broun (R-Ga.) to his seat this summer.
“Huckabee has jumped on that horse and is trying to ride it for all it’s worth,” said Echols, who counts himself a Huckabee supporter.
But Echols doubts Huckabee’s ultimate ability to compete with the high-dollar crowd. And at some point, he said, the GOP base may have to forsake purity for pragmatism.
That’s when the real tussle for evangelical voters would begin. And when it comes to the result, Echols is of a different mind than most.
Rather than reluctantly choosing Giuliani or Thompson, he predicts we’ll see the GOP’s Christian base lining up behind Romney. “The Mormons — say what you will about them — are political allies of the Religious Right,” he said.
He cited two bits of information to back up his theory, both drawn from the internal politics of conservative Christian activists.
James Dobson, founder of the Colorado-based Focus on the Family, is considered by many to be the most influential evangelical in the country. Mormons form a significant portion of his radio audience, Echols said.
Another clout-packing leader, Tony Perkins, is president of the Washington, D.C.-based Family Research Council. Perkins developed a working relationship with Romney during the fights over gay marriage in Massachusetts. Echols said he was there to see it happen.
“Romney really carried the water for us,” he said.
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