Christian Leaders Waking Up

I’m tipping my hat to OneMom for this. As near as I can tell, everyone else who’s read the article is giving credit to everyone else for pointing it out, but I saw it from OneMom …

World Magazine is carrying an article about a meeting of Evangelical leaders, during which many of them lament their handling of the Republican nominating process. I think that Paul Weyrich’s comment is particularly noteworthy.

Weyrich supported Mitt Romney in the nomination run, but now admits that he should have backed Mike Huckabee.

In a quiet, brief, but passionate speech, Weyrich essentially confessed that he and the other leaders should have backed Huckabee, a candidate who shared their values more fully than any other candidate in a generation. He agreed with Farris that many conservative leaders had blown it. By chasing other candidates with greater visibility, they failed to see what many of their supporters in the trenches saw clearly: Huckabee was their guy.

As one of the grassroots-level Christians who was trying to get Mike Huckabee nominated, I’m pleased to see that some of the leaders are finally seeing what I saw a year ago. I don’t want to be too hard on Weyrich, because he’s a man that I genuinely admire, but the truth is that instead of choosing the candidate who fit his values, he picked a candidate that he thought would win. He’s right — they were wrong.

Mike Huckabee had few big endorsements and even less money. While Gary Bauer, Tony Perkins, Paul Weyrich, the NRLC, and such went after the better-known candidates, Mike Huckabee was winning races with little money and endorsements from Janet Folger, Star Parker, and Michael Farris — not the big names.

They went for Romney, Thompson, McCain, or even Giuliani (in the case of Pat Robertson), the ones who couldn’t be bothered to show up for the Values Voter Debate.

By doing their best to marginalize the candidate who best represented their values … our values … various leaders of the “Religious Right” have managed to guarantee that the next President won’t be one of us.

We’ll see where this goes in the future.