WASHINGTON (ABP) — Rudy Giuliani wants conservative Christians to know they can trust him.
“You have absolutely nothing to fear from me,” he told a group of them Oct. 20. “I find it difficult understanding those who try to make me out as an activist for liberal causes. If you think that, just read any New York Times editorial while I was mayor of New York City.”
But some of the so-called “values voters” who attended the Washington summit where he spoke wonder if the fact that Giuliani actually has to say they have nothing to fear means they really do.
Indeed, Giuliani placed 8th in a recent straw poll of 5,775 self-described “values voters” who were asked to name their favorite presidential candidate. The poll and Giuliani's speech, along with speeches from the eight other GOP candidates, took place at the second-annual “Values Voters Summit” in Washington.
Sponsored by the Family Research Council and other conservative groups, the event gave conservative Christian voters encouragement and advice about their choice for leadership going into the 2008 presidential elections. It also let the candidates woo the finicky “values” constituency, which faces some tough decisions in upcoming primary elections.
On one hand, such voters have Giuliani, who routinely leads national polls but supports abortion rights, paths to citizenship for illegal immigrants and some forms of gun control. On the other hand, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney currently aligns perfectly with the family-values agenda and won the “Values Voter” poll with 27.6 percent of the vote. But he has supported abortion rights, gay rights and embryonic stem-cell research in previous political races. He's also a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and some evangelicals consider the Mormon faith a cult.
During his speech, Romney joked about his faith:
“By the way, I imagine that one or two of you may have heard that I'm Mormon,” he said, which prompted laughs. “I understand that some people think that they couldn't support someone of my faith, but I think that's just because they've listened to Harry Reid.”
Reid, a Democratic senator from Nevada and the Democrats' senate majority leader, is also a Mormon.
Romney sought to find common ground with the summit attendees on another issue: the role of religion in government. The effort to establish “secularism” — an “anti-religion in America,” he said — has to end.
“I'm convinced that a family with faith, a family that has a pastor or another adult that cares about every single child has a very distinct advantage in guiding children to a successful adulthood, and I want to make sure that the attorney general defends the free exercise of religion in this country,” he said. “We're a nation under God, and we do place our trust in him.”
Giuliani had a different tactic for his presentation: He told the audience that while he may not agree with them on some key issues, at least he's honest about it.
“Isn't it better that I tell you what I really believe, instead of pretending to change all of my positions to fit the prevailing winds?” Giuliani asked, in a not-so-subtle poke at Romney's changing views. “I believe trust is more important that 100-percent agreement.”
The thrice-married Giuliani also addressed some reticence among evangelicals and conservative Catholics to overlook his well-known family troubles.
“You and I know that I'm not a perfect person,” he said. “I've made mistakes in my life, but I've always done the best that I could to try to learn from them. I pray for forgiveness, I pray for strength, I pray for guidance. I feel my faith deeply, although maybe more privately than some because of the way I was brought up or for other reasons. And I believe that we serve God best by serving others.”
But FRC President Tony Perkins said conservative Christians have “drawn a line that we will not cross in supporting a pro-abortion candidate.”
“I would not say that it is an insignificant issue that we have that causes us to disagree,” Perkins said, in a press conference the day of Giuliani's speech. “It's not something that can be let go of easily. The life issue is a very fundamental issue.”
Another surprise in the presidential mix was the proximity of former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee to Romney in the straw poll, given Huckabee's usual single-digit percentages in national GOP polls. But judging by the reaction of the crowd at the Washington event, the surprise was a pleasant one.
Huckabee, a former Southern Baptist pastor, has been the darling of many socially conservative voters. He received 27.1 percent of the votes in the FRC straw poll, trailing Romney by only 30 votes out of more than 5,000 cast.
In his speech Oct. 20, Huckabee said the values of freedom, family and faith are non-negotiable.
“I'm very tired of hearing people who are unwilling to change the Constitution but seem more than willing to change the holy word of God as it relates to the definition of marriage,” Huckabee said. “We do not have the right to move the standards of God to meet new cultural norms. We need to move cultural norms to meet God's standards.”
Huckabee also spoke about the nation's freedom and sovereignty, which he said are under threat from “broken borders,” subjection to “international law,” the “destruction of human life,” and the Iraq war.
“We are not fighting a nation-state; we are fighting an ideology,” he said. “We cannot have the naive idea that if we leave them alone, they will leave us alone. That will get us killed.”
Huckabee has stronger evangelical credentials than Romney or Giuliani, who spoke to the crowd more as a guest than as one of them. Huckabee easily got the warmest responses from the crowd. But time will tell whether that emotion prompts votes for Huckabee when they really count — in the GOP primaries.
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Read more:
GOP candidates try to woo ‘values voters' at meeting (11/22/2007)
'Values voters' prefer Romney, Huckabee; Giuliani finishes disappointing 8th (11/22/2007)
Values Voters Summit: Land, Wallis debate how faith influences politics (11/22/2007)