katarina wrote:I will be writing in my choice for POTUS....RUSH LIMBAUGH!!!

phxcon wrote:I agree that McCain is a loser. BUT, a non-vote or a protest vote gets Obama elected. I cannot even imagine the price that that would cost... I will hold my nose and vote for McCain...

bedbug wrote:Paleocon,

You have sparked an intriguing thought. Perhaps HRC will mount her own version of OC to prop up McCain, thus laying the foundation for herself, in '12.

McCain Campaign Declines to Meet with Billy Graham
Sunday, June 8, 2008 10:10 PM
By: Doug Wead  

In another disturbing sign that Sen. John McCain has little interest in reaching out to his conservative base, including evangelical Christian voters, his campaign has declined an offer to meet with the Rev. Billy Graham.

For almost six decades, Graham has been America’s most influential preacher and evangelist, a man sought out by every president since Harry Truman

The rejection of an offer to meet with Graham is yet another indication that the McCain campaign has made a deliberate, strategic decision to chart a new course for the GOP, a course without the sizeable evangelical Christian voting bloc serving as its base.

The new course is likely designed to pick up disaffected Democrats, even Sen. Hillary Clinton’s women supporters, who are pro-choice.

The danger for McCain is in his campaign’s failure to grasp the size of the born again vote. Latest surveys show that fully 42 percent of all Americans claim to be “born again.”

But the risk is not just that the Republican nominee will lose evangelical voters but that he will lose its massive infrastructure: megachurches with their schools, television programs and massive mailing lists which traditionally play a crucial role for Republicans in voter registration and voter turnout. The cost to the party of replicating this role themselves would be incalculable.

McCain’s new course is a stunning turnabout for the GOP. In the summer of 1980, Ronald Reagan reached out to evangelicals gathered at the Religious Roundtable in a Dallas, Texas, saying to his audience of 10,000, “I know you can’t endorse me, but I want you to know that I endorse you.” It marked the beginning of a GOP relationship with evangelicals that became a winning coalition for three presidents.

As history now records, the day before the 2000 election, the candidate, George W. Bush, flew down from Ohio, met publicly with Graham during his Jacksonville crusade at a press conference, and won the state of Florida by 600 votes the next day.

When Jacobs called me earlier this year to suggest that we try to arrange a similar meeting between Graham and McCain, I was skeptical. During the 2000 primary race, McCain called evangelicals “agents of intolerance.”

Though McCain actually is quite engaging with religious believers -- I have been with him a couple of times at religious events and once interviewed him for a television show that aired on a religious network -- his staff is notoriously hostile. McCain adviser, Charlie Black, and campaign manager, Rick Davis, have a long, troubled history with the evangelical wing of the party.

McCain’s hasty decision to discard Hagee was seen by many evangelicals, even those who are not fans of Hagee, as a betrayal.

But Hagee and Graham are not the only evangelical leaders to be rebuffed by McCain. Press reports indicate McCain has turned away olive branch invitations from the influential Dr. James Dobson for the senator to visit him at his headquarters in Colorado Springs.

The theory behind the McCain campaign’s strategy to ignore evangelicals is that they have nowhere else to go, that Obama is too liberal, and they’ll vote against him come November.

But McCain’s team is missing the fact that the vacuum created by the GOP’s divorce from them is being filled by the Democrats.

By repudiating evangelical Christians he scrambles the traditional loyalties. It may win him some pro-choice women voters, demoralized by Clinton’s loss to Obama.

And it may win him a few months more of favorable media attention.

But marginalizing a voting bloc that represents 42 percent of the nation is more likely a desperate decision, revealing a campaign that is unsure of itself, fears defeat and has decided to roll the dice.