Hugh Hewitt, the only right-wing radio talk-show host to whom I regularly listen, has an interesting post up about Pat Robertson’s surprise endorsement of Rudy Giuliani. Given that James Dobson — right up there with Robertson in terms of influence among conservative evangelicals — has stated categorically that he won’t support the pro-choice Rudy if he is the GOP nominee, Robertson’s announcement seemed surprising. Hugh Hewitt, an enthusiastic Mitt Romney supporter, is rather eager to make the case that the endorsement doesn’t matter much. (The Romney types really should be getting nervous, as their boy is still going nowhere in the national polls. I still think he’ll be the nominee, however, facing Clinton.)
I think there’s another reason Robertson picked Giuliani, and it has everything to do with how Pat interprets prophecy.
My liberal credentials are pretty damn good. Though I’ve registered as a Republican for tactical reasons, I’ll be voting for any of the Democratic candidates over any of the current Republican crop come next fall. And I’m a Berkeley-educated, childless forty year-old vegan who listens to NPR, reads the New York Review of Books, and who has spent far more time traveling and living abroad than he has in any US state not bordering on the Atlantic or Pacific. I worked on the Mo Udall campaign in 1976 when I wasn’t quite nine. I come from good sturdy liberal stock.
But I’ve also spent much of my adult life around right-wing evangelicals. An adult convert who was washed in the blood and slain in the spirit, I wince at the way in which many of my fellow urban, secular, hipster liberal friends caricature conservative Christians. Most secular liberals, as Hewitt points out, lump all evangelicals together. They don’t know the serious theological and cultural differences that often divide a Jerry Falwell from a T.D. Jakes, a Pat Robertson from a James Dobson, a Jim Bakker from a John Macarthur, a Richard Land from a Richard Mouw. I’ve worshipped with pentecostals and orthodox presbyterians, and I’ve done so not as a disinterested sociologist of religion but as an enthusiastic seeker looking for a community to welcome and challenge me. Along the way, I’ve had many of the stereotypes I was raised with shattered.
One huge and little discussed divide on the religious right lies between those who think the “end times” are imminent and those who are more reluctant to claim any knowledge of the hour of the Lord’s return. Those who do anticipate the end of the world are particularly concerned with signs and portents; their unflagging concern for Israel, for example, is closely linked to a sense of prophecy. Other conservatives suspect we’re going to be here a while, and are more interested in transforming society than they are in preparing for society to end in a flash.
Pat Robertson has always had apocalyptic tendencies. And his endorsement of Giuliani makes sense in that light. Giuliani is considered to be the toughest on terror, and probably the most likely of the current GOP crop to make a pre-emptive strike on Iran. In millenarian terms, a pugnacious Giuliani administration would accelerate the pace of history as it moves inevitably towards the End Times. The more aggressive US foreign policy is (and we can all assume Rudy will be aggressive), the sooner the Lord’s return. I suspect, honestly, that Giuliani’s reputation as a bellicose warrior trumps, in Robertson’s mind, his “soft” position on the social issues. After all, once Christ returns, there will be no more abortions!
Dr. Dobson’s focus has always been, as the organization he heads points out, on the family. Dobson talks little about the end times in comparison to Robertson; he speaks for a group of social conservatives who worry about the world in which their grandchildren will grow up — because if you ask them, most of them suspect that there still will be a world in their grandchildren’s time. Those right-wing Christians who are less apocalyptic in their theology are more concerned with social issues as a consequence — maintaining the moral fabric of society is all the more important to them because they imagine that society will continue to endure. Hence Dobson’s inability to get past Giuliani’s social liberalism, and hence Robertson’s endorsement.
My bet: the more a conservative evangelical suspects the end times are near, the easier time he or she will have supporting Rudy. The more convinced a conservative evangelical is that we’re gonna be here a while, the more likely they are to back Romney or Huckabee. Please someone, do a poll.
I don’t think anyone supports a strong foreign policy in hopes of accelerating the end times. I could see how some obsessed with the end times stuff might be a bit more worried that failure to elect the right administration now could result in the end times coming about prematurely. As for Dobson, he seems to take the view that it’s better to lose all than accept half a loaf. It’s not a long view / short view thing, it’s just plain dumb.
I don’t think anyone supports a strong foreign policy in hopes of accelerating the end times
Uh, meet John Hagee: http://www.alternet.org/blogs/themix/39264
You don’t know the right millenarians. And X, I don’t think you’re in the Left Behind demographic either.
For some godforsaken reason I had the 700 club on in the background this morning and five minutes of listening to Pat lead me to a similar conclusion.
xlrq, I suspect Dobson’s bluffing. There’s no reason not to, at this point; Gulianni is certainly not inevitable and his threat of withdrawal of support is a serious one, but I suspect it’s a bluff.
On the other hand, I do think it might not be. If Dobson’s reading of the tea leaves is that the GOP ain’t gonna win anything this year anyway, withdrawing his support and possibly challenging Gulianni will create the perception that he played a major role in scuttling Gulianni’s presidential bid (whereas all he really did was increase the margin), which might plausibly give him more power and influence with Republicans in 2012 and beyond.
Dobson is many, many things, most of which are pretty disturbing, but I remain unconvinced that “dumb” is one of them.
I didn’t say he’s dumb, I said it is. I don’t think the guy’s a moron, but he’s never impressed me as politically astute, either. The bluffing theory is an interesting one, though. I suppose that if he were astute he could threaten non-support now, then just not do a very good job of not-supporting him if he wins the nomination anyway.
This makes amazingly good sense. I’m surprised none of the usual (politically commenting) subjects have come up with this. Bravo.
Christians on the right seem almost more dedicated to remaining in the game of politics than endorsing a candidate who shares their moral values. Many fear Hilary’s appointments to the Supreme Court more than anything else.
I am an idealist, but I’d rather be on a sinking ship with a candidate who is true to his/her principles.
Julie, I hear you — but that attitude got us Ralph Nader’s 90,000 Florida votes. After 2000, I swore I would never again third-party it in a close election. If the right wants to repeat the left’s 2000 error in 2008, they’re welcome to it.
I’m not a great believer in letting the best be the enemy of the good enough.
Wow, this is the first explanation of the endorsement that made any sense to me. As someone who grew up in a church that believes very closely to Robertson, you would think it would occur to me.
The theological debate surrounding the end times is a fascinating one, especially the pre vs post millenarians.
I’ve been thinking about your tactical maneuver. The more I think about it the more I believe it is a Machiavellian move on your part….Isn’t the point of voting in an election to vote for your favorite candidate? You are actually going so far as to change parties for the primary in order to vote for someone you have no feelings for…..isn’t this a bit disingenuous. Think about it, you are not voting for your favorite candidate in the primary because you think she has it in “the bag.” Right? …..So what if she doesn’t have it in the bag?….What if the polls are wrong? This means you neglected to vote for your candidate, not to vote for someone you believe in, but to lessen someone elses chances!
Machiavellian…….for sure!
Mercy, I became a Republican because I want to help restore a certain ethos to the GOP — an ethos that my family knew, the ethos of Pete McCloskey, the ethos of Millicent Fenwick. I want to help — and I’m giving money to Republicans for Environmental Protection to this end — bring back a conservationist ethic to the conservative movement.
If Mitt Romney were running for president in 2008 on his 1994 senate platform, he might get my vote. But bottom line, real change comes when you build consensus, and I want to see consensus on environmental issues (the most important and dearest to me). And I’ve voted for Republicans in general elections before, most recently when I cast my ballot in the 2006 state insurance commissioner’s race.
Can we please stop saying that Rudy is pro-choice? The guy has said he’s going to nominate ’strict constructionist’ Alito-type justices. He’s pro-choice in the same way that Romney is pro-gay, or in the same way that Obama is pro-life, for that matter.
It doesn’t matter if he’d give his daughter money for an abortion; it matters what he’s going to do with the abortion issue in the public sphere. And it’s not looking promising.
Would that be Pete so-called holocaust McCloskey? Why on earth would anyone want to restore this rubbish to any major (or, for that matter, minor) political party?
Acer, no, “we” can’t stop saying Giuiliani is pro-choice simply because he (supposedly) wants to appoint strict constructionists to the bench. Just because an abortion rights advocate actually takes the time to read the Constitution and figure out it doesn’t say anything about abortion, that doesn’t mean he’s anti-abortion any more than it make him pro-abortion. By your logic, I must be pro-90%-rate-income-tax, since I can’t find anything in the Constitution prohibiting that, either.
Hugo, I really find it surprising that you can get past Mitt’s dog carrier on the car roof. Do you not believe it happened (I didn’t see it myself, so I can hardly speak to that), or not believe it matters (I doubt that, given your concern for animals)?
As for end times theology: I find this stuff interesting, precisely because I can’t help seeing, in some of the “Christian Zionist” and end-time foreign policy games, a deeply mistaken attempt to impose a human agenda on the Creator. If the omnipotent Creator of the universe, the great Alpha and Omega, decides the right time has come to make an end, anything we do will hardly make a difference, and if the Creator decides not to make an end just yet, does anyone really believe we can hurry things up by starting a war? I don’t fear what these people may do half as much as I fear the implications of what they think– for themselves and other believing souls.
Hugo — in the GOP??? Surely the end times are here!
Julie, I hear you — but that attitude got us Ralph Nader’s 90,000 Florida votes. After 2000, I swore I would never again third-party it in a close election. If the right wants to repeat the left’s 2000 error in 2008, they’re welcome to it.
Once again, the argument is for the evil of two lessers.
Hugo,
I don’t know if you’ve read Jim Wallis’ take on Robertson’s stand - http://blog.beliefnet.com/godspolitics/2007/11/robertson-for-rudy-by-jim-wall.html - he seems to suggest that it’s actually more that he thinks Rudy can win, and his greedy need for a Republican fiscal agenda outweighs his professed concerns about same sex union and abortion.
Iteresting reading for sure. I can’t make a call on it, as I find almost everything I’ve ever heard Robertson come out with so utterly loathsome that to try and understand his motives with something like these seems foolhardy… I’m sure those who live closer and with more engagement with that culture will find it easier, and I’ll keep reading what you lovelies have to say about it! :o)
Sxx
Thanks for the link, Steve.
John, if Mitt Romney emerges as the nominee, I’ll blog about it. But I have no intention of actually supporting him in the primary or the general, so his sins against pets — while apparently egregious — are not particularly noteworthy. Such petty, idiotic cruelty is all too common — witness LBJ pulling his beagles’ ears.