The preacher primary

GOP leaders battle for support from the Three Kingmakers

	Televangelist Pat Robertson is considering which candidate to throw his considerable support behind, but seems to be leaning toward Mitt Romney.
Emilio Morenatti / AP

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By Howard Fineman

MSNBC

updated 9:37 p.m. ET Feb. 14, 2007

Howard Fineman
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WASHINGTON - The Republicans’ first primary contest is next week, and it’s not in New Hampshire. It is in Orlando, at the annual meeting of the National Religious Broadcasters. GOP presidential candidates will be there to try to generate buzz that will translate into evangelical airtime — and support in the “base” in 2008.

Unlike 2000 (and of course 2004) George W. Bush and Karl Rove don’t have the event wired. So it is wide open — just as the Republican nomination race is — and so Orlando is an important pit stop, especially for Sen. John McCain, former Gov. Mitt Romney, former Gov. Mike Huckabee and Sen. Sam Brownback. All of them want to win the nomination by building from “the base” outward, the way it’s been done in the party since the days of Reagan.

One candidate will be conspicuous by his absence: Front-runner Rudy Giuliani. I am told that he won’t be there, but in a sense he doesn’t have to be. He’s not trying to win by getting right with the religious conservatives on cultural and faith issues. If he is going to get their votes, it will be through other means, or by default in a general election race against, say, Hillary Clinton.

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The Three Kingmakers
Because there is no obvious and overpowering standard-bearer for the cause of the religious right, age-old fault lines and feuds are re-emerging among the titans who control the Sacred Satellite Dishes. Each of them thinks that he can anoint the One.

The Three Kingmakers have familiar names and big, traditional audiences on radio, television and now, the Internet: the Rev. Jerry Falwell, Dr. Pat Robertson and Dr. James Dobson. A younger generation (or two) is coming along, but these remain big brand names in the burgeoning world of all-Christian commerce.

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There are two main fault lines among them: the one in Virginia, which separates Falwell and Robertson; and the one that separates Dobson, in his mountain fastness of Colorado Springs, from those he genially regards as amateurs (everybody else).

Here’s how the dynamics are working right now. Falwell’s anointee-designate is McCain. The reasons are personal but, more important, historical and, in a sense, familial.

McCain, Bush and Falwell
Interactive
Analyzing the 2008 presidential field
The Founding Father of modern TV preachers in politics, Falwell has been reverend-in-residence in the Bush family for 20 years. Back when Ronald Reagan was president, the late Lee Atwater cultivated Falwell on behalf of then-Vice President George H.W. Bush. Falwell became Bush’s trusted ally in the 1988 race, and in the losing race for re-election in 1992. In both campaigns, Falwell got to know George H.W. Bush, and Falwell was instrumental in helping to unify the mega-preachers behind Junior in the 2000 race.