Pawlenty tries to woo Christian conservatives

By CHARLES BABINGTON, Associated Press

In an election season driven by economic worries, Republican leaders are trying to keep Christian conservatives excited and involved by blurring the line between religious/social issues and low-tax crusades -- a divide that has helped shape past GOP primaries.

Failure to do so could potentially depress turnout by an important part of the Republican base. Not only are fiscal issues dominating the debate, but social and Christian conservatives have no obvious candidate to turn to, as they did in 2008 when Baptist minister Mike Huckabee ran.

Facing this vacuum, a host of presidential hopefuls are emphasizing their religious faith and opposition to abortion and gay marriage, even though they are better known as business-like managers of state governments and private ompanies.

Their efforts were on display Friday at a Washington gathering of the Faith and Freedom Coalition, a group whose name summarizes the bid to combine religious and libertarian priorities.

Former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty told the crowd that he favors traditional marriage. He added that, while governor, he worked to bar legalization of same-sex marriage.

"All domestic relationships are not the same as traditional marriage," he said. "It needs to be protected. And a mom and a dad and parents matter in a child's life for obvious reasons, and so it is a cornerstore of our nation and a cornerstone of our social fabric to define marriage as between a man and a woman. I'm glad to be co-author of the Defense of Marriage act in Minnesota."

Pawlenty also told his audience that he would support Israel if elected president.

Pawlenty also said he would strengthen anti-terrorist activities, to prevent a repeat of the 9-11 attacks.

"Radical Islam, not all of Islam, but radical Islam believes it's OK to kill and to murder in the name of their religion. It's not. We need to make sure we call this by name, and not as a matter of being afraid of it as a matter of political correctness."

Other speakers at the conference included Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, Texas Rep. Ron Paul and former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman.

"I do not believe the Republican Party should focus solely on our economic life to the neglect of our human life," Huntsman told the crowd of several hundred, after citing numerous anti-abortion laws he signed as Utah governor.

Acknowledging that the federal deficit will be a huge issue in 2012, Huntsman said: "If Republicans ignore life, the deficit we will face is one that is much more destructive. It will be a deficit of the heart and of the soul."

Romney made similar points, if somewhat more prosaically. "The debt we are amassing as a nation and passing on to our children is immoral," he said in remarks prepared for an evening address to the conference.

The Faith and Freedom Coalition is headed by Ralph Reed, who made his name as the young and savvy political strategist for the Christian Coalition in the 1990s. Starting with television evangelist Pat Robertson's second-place finish in the 1988 GOP Iowa caucus, the religious right played a major role in Republican politics for years. It still does to a lesser extent.

Following the 2007 death of the politically dynamic Christian leader Jerry Falwell, some churches and ministers have de-emphasized partisan politics. The religious right's place is less certain now. Reed is among those trying to strengthen it by tying it more tightly to economic issues, which traditionally took a back seat to abortion, prayer in school, gay rights and other issues for a large segment of voters.

Everyone is concerned about deficit spending, Reed said in an interview. "Intergenerational theft in the form of massive debts passed on to future taxpayers is a moral issue," he said.

Reed said the line between social conservatives and fiscal conservatives is thinner and blurrier than it was a few years ago. "The Tea Party was the moment that marriage took place," he said, alluding to the libertarian-tinged movement that arose in 2009, mainly in opposition to President Obama's health care proposals.

It's not entirely clear how solid that marriage is, however. Without question, many conservative and liberal voters care deeply about social and economic issues alike. But in the world of conservative activists, many seem more at home in one camp or the other.

An August 2010 poll by the Pew Research Center found that nearly half of Tea Party supporters had not heard of or did not have an opinion about "the conservative Christian movement sometimes known as the religious right."

Another conservative speaker on Friday, Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council, suggested that social issues play the principal role in the social-fiscal marriage. "We cannot fix the fiscal until we fix the family," he said, urging the government and society to encourage marriage and parental responsibility.

Anti-tax activist Grover Norquist says Christian conservatives obviously care about fiscal issues, but they still gravitate toward candidates with strong evangelical backgrounds and an emphasis on issues such as combating abortion and championing the sanctity of marriage.

Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor, captured many of those voters when he won the 2008 Iowa caucus. His absence this year, Norquist said, leaves "those voters and those issues more in play."

An evangelical with a record of cutting taxes and spending might do especially well, he said. Pawlenty might fit that role, Norquist said, adding that he is neutral in the presidential race.

Pawlenty was raised Catholic but left for an evangelical congregation while courting his future wife, Mary. In his recent autobiography, he quotes the Bible and emphasizes his faith more prominently than he did during his two terms as governor.

Pawlenty is hardly alone in courting the Christian conservative vote in Huckabee's absence. Bachmann of Minnesota, who is inching toward a presidential bid, hit several buttons in her 13-minute speech Friday to the Faith and Freedom crowd. She reminded them that she home-schooled her five biological children and served as foster mother to 23 others. She said "marriage is under siege" in America and closed with a prayer.

Newt Gingrich, a protestant-turned-Catholic, also has stressed his religious faith, although he was not scheduled to speak to the Faith and Freedom gathering. Among the presidential hopefuls who did plan to speak here Friday or Saturday, Paul sticks mostly to libertarian and financial issues, while Rick Santorum and Herman Cain delve deeply into social matters.

The audience members sat silently when Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour urged them to embrace the eventual Republican presidential nominee despite the certainty that they will disagree with him or her on some issues.

"Purity is the enemy of victory," Barbour said, later describing his words as "the Dutch uncle talk."

Many at the conference seemed more moved by the issues being discussed than by the candidates discussing them.

"I'm still sitting on the fence," said Mark Roepke of Arlington, Va., who was handing out stickers saying "Defund Planned Parenthood," a group that provides pregnancy counseling and abortions. His eventual choice, he said, will have to bridge the gap that Reed contends is narrowing.

"I don't think you can have a country that's economically healthy without being socially and spiritually healthy," Roepke said. (MPR Reporter Nancy Lebens contributed to this report.) (Copyright 2011 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)

Gallery

Fullscreen SlideshowPrevious Slide

1 of 1

Next Slide