WASHINGTON — Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s bid to solidify his conservative credentials in the Republican presidential contest got a boost Wednesday when he picked up the endorsement of televangelist Pat Robertson, one of the nation’s most influential Christian leaders.
At the same time, Arizona Sen. John McCain, the onetime GOP presidential front-runner seeking a comeback with the support of evangelicals, got the backing of Kansas Sen. Sam Brownback, a longtime ally of religious conservatives who, until last month, was himself a candidate for the Republican nomination.
Those and other recent endorsements – most notably, Moral Majority co-founder Paul Weyrich’s backing of former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney on Tuesday – reflect the difficulty religious conservatives are having this year coalescing behind one Republican presidential candidate in the Republican primaries the way they have done in every GOP campaign since 1980.
At a news conference in Washington, Robertson, the founder of the Christian Coalition and a candidate for the GOP nomination in 1988, barely mentioned his differences with Giuliani over the social issues that have been at the heart of evangelicals becoming the most influential bloc within the Republican Party since Ronald Reagan’s successful campaign for president in 1980.
Robertson said he is backing Giuliani because “to me, the overriding issue before the American people is the defense of our population from the blood lust of Islamic terrorists,” and Giuliani had proved himself “a leader with a bold vision” even before Sept. 11, 2001.
“Rudy Giuliani took a city that was in decline and considered ungovernable and reduced its violent crime, revitalized its core, dramatically lowered its taxes, cut through a welter of bureaucratic regulations, and did so in the spirit of bipartisanship which is so urgently needed in Washington today,” he said.
Robertson said he is willing to overlook Giuliani’s pro-abortion rights stance because he takes him at his word to appoint “strict constructionist” judges to the Supreme Court and federal bench – a term used to describe judges who are likely to overturn the landmark Roe vs. Wade Supreme Court ruling that established a constitutional right to an abortion.
