In 2008, evangelical conservatives in Georgia and elsewhere weren’t too thrilled with John McCain’s bid to become the Republican nominee for president, and so lined up behind Mike Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor and preacher.
Four years later, Rick Santorum, the former U.S. senator from Pennsylvania, became the default setting for evangelicals suspicious of Mitt Romney, a Mormon and the GOP’s eventual nominee.
But 2016 is shaping up to be very different. With a vast field of 17 candidates, who will make their debut in a two-tiered debate on Fox News tonight, religious conservatives have a banquet of choices. Some find it baffling — and perhaps even worrisome.
Baffling because there is no obvious candidate to line up behind – or against. Which could eventually present challenges for past favorites such as Huckabee, a top-tier candidate tonight, and Santorum, who’s sitting at the kid’s table.
“I’m really torn. All my friends are in different camps,” said Pat Gartland, who ran the Christian Coalition of Georgia in the 1990s. He owes Jeb Bush for help the former governor volunteered during a recent Florida campaign. But Gartland is also obliged to Marco Rubio, who as speaker of the Florida state House passed some legislation Gartland was interested in.
And Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker won’t stop courting him. “Anybody who goes against unions and beats them? Wow,” Gartland said.
This is why Secretary of State Brian Kemp’s March 1 “SEC primary” and this weekend’s resulting RedState Gathering in Atlanta are so important to GOP activists in Georgia. Gartland has already met Walker, U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, and Ohio Gov. John Kasich. He intends to kick the tires on the rest of the candidates this weekend – his antennae up for signs of vacillation and insincerity. “Hemming and hawing,” in his words.
The Rev. Jay Bailey is lead pastor at Solid Rock Assembly of God Church in Midland, Ga. On Saturday, his church will play host to an evening rally for Cruz. But Bailey isn’t ready to pledge his support.
“I’m evaluating them. There are certain things that I approve of in Ted Cruz’ positions, but I’m evaluating,” Bailey said. “This isn’t an endorsement, but an opportunity to explore.”
The indecision isn’t limited to Georgia. Last week, World Magazine, a publication aimed at religious conservatives, published an informal and admittedly unscientific poll of nearly 100 evangelical leaders on their presidential favorites.
U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida was the first or second choice of 39 percent, followed by Bush and Walker. Cruz came in fourth, and Huckabee finished much lower. Santorum and neurologist Ben Carson received not a single vote.
No surprise, but billionaire Donald Trump, whose name is associated with both casinos and multiple divorces, barely scratched.
Even beyond abortion, the top issue for these evangelical leaders was “religious freedom” – a sign of the deep worry caused by the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision establishing same-sex marriage as a constitutional right.
To Gartland and others in the religious conservative movement, this is where the surfeit of candidates becomes worrisome. With church membership down almost across the board, the culture wars going against them, and clout within the national Republican party diminished, many religious conservatives are worried that a smorgasbord of candidates could dilute their influence even further.
On Tuesday, two Florida Catholics, Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio, addressed 13,000 Southern Baptists in Nashville. Each – Rubio in a video interview and Bush in person — assured the audience that, if elected president, he would shield them from the impact of gay marriage.
“We’re now on the water’s edge of an argument that some have begun, that if you do not agree with same-sex marriage or whatever, that you’re actually discriminating against people,” Rubio said.
Bush struck a similar tone. “We don’t want to create an environment that discriminates against people based on their sexual orientation, and we certainly don’t want to discriminate against people that believe that their faith drives their actions and the things that they consider to be important. That balance is what we need to find.”
But it is significant that neither candidate, perhaps with an eye on the general election, declared that he would turn back the clock on same-sex marriage.
And that is why, this weekend, you might want to keep an eye on Ted Cruz, who appears bent on uniting liberty Republicans and evangelicals – particularly in the South. Cruz has publicly theorized that states not specifically named in the Supreme Court’s gay marriage decision are free to ignore it.
Of the 10 candidates coming to Atlanta on Friday and Saturday, his calendar is the heftiest. And at the Koch brothers retreat for mega-donors in California this weekend, the senator from Texas proclaimed that the March 1 "SEC primary" – Georgia included – would serve as "a firewall" for his candidacy.
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