DALLAS - John McCain still has an “evangelical problem.”

High-profile evangelical conservative James Dobson, who has already said he would not vote for McCain in November, said on Wednesday he saw no evidence the Arizona senator was wooing conservatives.

 ”I have seen no evidence that Sen. McCain is successfully unifying the Republican Party or drawing conservatives to his fold. To the contrary, he seems intent on driving them away,” Dobson, founder and chairman of the influential conservative advocacy group Focus on the Family, said in a statement published in The Wall Street Journal.

Dobson went on to reiterate the problems that he and many other religious conservatives have with McCain, including his failure to support a federal constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage.

He also took issue with McCain’s speech in March to the World Affairs Council on Foreign Policy, in which he laid out his support for government action on climate change and criticized the U.S. military for its use of torture.

This highlights McCain’s continuing problem with white conservative evangelicals — a group that analysts say he must woo as they have become the most reliable bloc of Republican voters.

Photo Credit: Reuters/Rick Wilking (Copies of James Dobson biography)

DALLAS - The second step in the convoluted caucus and convention process followed by Texas Democrats wrapped up this weekend with the party’s county and Senate district conventions.

Now the final step in this three-stage process will take place at the party’s state convention in Austin June 6-7.

At stake are 67 delegates that will remain up for grabs until the June convention, which could be one of the final battles between Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama in their bruising fight for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Clinton won the state’s primary and most of the 126 delegates that were on the line in that contest, but local media reports suggest that Obama is leading the long, drawn-out battle for the final 67 delegates. The Lone Star State also has 35 “superdelegates.”

Delegates can change their mind between now and the June convention, so it remains up in the air.

“This will not be determined until the June convention and so the Texas Democratic Party is not calling any winners in advance,” state party spokesman Hector Nieto said.

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DALLAS - The Pew Research Center reported on Wednesday that the U.S. public’s awareness of the number of American military fatalities in Iraq has fallen sharply over the last few months, underscoring the waning interest in the war ahead of November’s presidential election.

Only 28 percent of adults now can correctly say that approximately 4,000 Americans have died in the Iraq war, the nonprofit research group said.

That’s down from August 2007, when 54 percent of those surveyed correctly identified the fatality level at that time — about 3,500 deaths.

The nationwide poll of 1,003 adults taken from Feb 28 to March 2 also found that more respondents underestimated than overestimated the number of fatalities. A plurality of 35 percent said there had been about 3,000 troop deaths, while another 11 percent said they thought just 2,000 have died. Around 23 percent put the number closer to 5,000.

Pew noted that the fall in fatality awareness comes as news coverage of the conflict diminishes.

Pew reported in late February that public attitudes toward the war in Iraq had turned more positive as the security situation there seemed to improve.

The polling group said this was a favorable development for expected Republican nominee John McCain, who is an unflinching backer of the war effort and was an early supporter of the “troop surge” there.

Democratic candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama both say they will begin withdrawing troops quickly if either wins the November election.

DALLAS - Hillary Clinton won the Democratic primary in Texas. But voters will have to wait until the June state convention to see who won the caucus.

Local media reports say the party has been overwhelmed by the estimated 1 million voters who showed up to caucus on March 4 under the state party’s complex  system, a hybrid caucus-primary. Dubbed the “Texas Two-Step,” the process actually involves three, the state party says.

The party also says the system is supposed to be a long one anyway with the next step decided at its county and senatorial district conventions on March 29th. But the final allocation of the 67 delegates awarded by the convoluted convention/caucus process will not be alloted before the state convention on June 6/7.

Of the state party’s 228 national convention delegates, 126 are determined by the primary while the Lone Star state also has 35 super-delegates.

For what it’s worth, with about 41 percent of precints reporting, Sen. Barack Obama has narrow lead over Clinton among caucus goers. But just to make things more confusing, delegates can change their mind along the way.

Calling for the process to be reformed, The Dallas Morning News said in an editorial on Wednesday that the state’s influence had been undercut on the national political stage by the confusion, which it said has “left the rest of the country wondering: What on earth is Texas doing?”

It said there were reports of missing results and general disorder.

The state’s party spokesman Hector Nieto says the process was designed in 1988 to accomodate around 100,000 voters, not a million, but insists that nothing is supposed to be set in stone anyway until June.

“Those delegates don’t get allocated and awarded until the state convention,” he told Reuters.

One thing about the convoluted process is clear: These 67 delegates are in play until early June. And in a close Democratic presidential contest that could make a big difference.

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DALLAS - In America, church and state may be separate but the distinction between religion and politics has become increasingly blurred over the past couple of decades.

In the just published book “The God Strategy: How Religion Became A Political Weapon In America,” authors David Domke and Kevin Coe chart the rise of religiosity in American politics and discuss its implications. They do so by, among other things, comparing the religious language used in presidential addresses, party platforms and other political discourse over the decades.

This includes some imaginative charts such as one that gives the total word count for faith and family in the Republican and Democratic Party platforms from 1932 to 2004. (The Republicans were a bit behind at one time but since 1980 have soared ahead in this count).

Domke, who is a professor of communication at the University of Washington in Seattle, spoke to Reuters about the “God Strategy” which he says has been used with effect by Democratic presidents like Bill Clinton as well as the Republican George W. Bush.

Q: Can you imagine a party or presidential candidate who could be successful today without employing the “God Strategy?”
A: My answer is no. The reality is that in American presidential politics not willing to publicly emphasize your faith will mean you will not be a serious candidate on either side of the partisan aisle.

Q: How do you see the God Strategy playing out this November?
A: It really is interesting. About six months ago when I looked at the six major candidates from the two major parties, for the first time in decades the Democrats were better situated for a fusion of religion and politics. If you looked at the frontrunners for the Democrats, Clinton, Edwards and Obama, all three of them had been … out publicly putting faith into their issue positions. Clinton had talked about her Methodist upbringing, Edwards had talked about it in terms of poverty, and Obama had talked about it in terms of God in the public arena. All three of them had been much more vocal than any of the major Republican candidates at that time, Huckabee wasn’t really on the radar screen. But when you looked at Giuliani, McCain, possibly Thompson, the reality was that it appeared that the folks on the Republican side were going to be less comfortable with all of this. Now you have McCain who is not very comfortable talking about his faith but will do it. I think we will see some more of that from him. He’ll do it as needed and that will work for him if Clinton is the nominee for the Democrats. If it’s Obama then I think Obama has the higher ground on religion and politics.

Q: You say in your book that the God Strategy in some ways threatens the democratic vitality of the nation? Can you elaborate?
A: In many respects the fusion of religion and politics is absolutely contrary to what the founders desired for the country. They fled religious sectarian violence, religious persecution and they set out build a new place where God would be part of the equation but there wouldn’t be a state, a national religion. And that was unprecedented …

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DALLAS - Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) leaders on Monday shook up their flock by issuing their strongest statement to date on the potential perils of climate change and the need to take action on the issue.

The statement, which was signed by SBC President Frank Page, past presidents and other church leaders, was short on specifics but represents a significant departure from the group’s past pronouncements on the issue, which have urged caution and not much else.

Monday’s statement by some of the leaders of the 16 million-member SBC — America’s largest Protestant Church and one of its most conservative — said such caution could be taken as “uncaring, reckless and ill-informed.”

If the membership at large accepts the document, the Republican Party’s presumptive presidential nominee John McCain could stand to gain as he has broken ranks with much of his party by highlighting the issue of global warming and talking about “common sense” ways to limit carbon emissions, such as promoting advanced energy technologies.

Having the SBC on the side on climate change could give McCain some needed traction with conservative evangelicals who have not warmed to him because of his failure to adopt their strident positions on a range of social issues from gay marriage to stem-cell research.

The SBC statement also is another step in closing the divisions between the old culture warriors of the religious right and the so-called “evangelical center,” which sees a broader Biblical agenda that includes issues such as combating poverty and environmental degradation.

The statement was not entirely unexpected since many conservative evangelicals are known for their passion for the outdoors. A comprehensive nationwide survey in 2006 of licensed hunters and anglers commissioned by the National Wildlife Federation found that half of those polled identified themselves as evangelical Christian.

Hunters and anglers often are the first to note changes in the climate or environment.

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-Photo credit: Reuters/Larry Downing (SBC President Dr. Frank Page, second from left, meets with President Bush in the White House’s Oval Office in 2006 with Dr. Morris Chapman, left, president of the SBC Executive Committee, and Chapman’s wife, Dayle, right.

DALLAS - Another exit poll has uncovered more evangelical Democrats and indicates that their agenda seems to be moving beyond the “God, Guns and Gays” focus of the Religious Right’s old culture warriors.

An exit poll commisioned after Ohio’s Tuesday primary by Faith in Public Life, the Center for American Progress Action Fund and Sojourners asked both Republicans and Democrats if they were evangelical or born-again Christian. Almost all other polls have only asked this of Republican primary voters as this group is widely regarded as a key base for the GOP.

The poll, conducted by Zogby International, found that 43 percent of white evangelical Ohio primary voters took part in the Democratic primary and 57 percent in the Republican one.

Other national polls still show over 60 percent of white evangelicals firmly in the Republican camp but analysts have said they do not expect them to play quite the same role in this November’s election as they did in the 2004 White House race, when by some estimates  around 78 percent of those who cast ballots did so for President George W. Bush.

The Tuesday poll also found that 42 percent of Ohio’s white evangelical voters ranked jobs and the economy as the most important issue area in deciding how to vote versus 14 percent who ranked abortion and same-sex marriage as the most important issue.

Such a finding may not be surprising in a Rust Belt state like Ohio, which has been shedding manufacturing and other jobs.  But the poll also found that 54 percent of white evangelical primary voters surveyed wanted a broader agenda such as ending poverty and protecting the environment.

The poll had a fairly wide margin of error of 5 percentage points.

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DALLAS - Former White House hopeful Mike Huckabee endorsed Sen. John McCain as he dropped out of the Republican presidential race on Tuesday night. But the million-dollar question is: will his network of evangelical supporters follow his lead?

Evangelicals not only lean heavily Republican, they are also among the party’s most energetic activists and Huckabee tapped networks that any GOP candidate could use in a close race.

The Huckabee machine included “homeschoolers” who volunteered for him in droves. The energy of those conservative Christians — who as their name suggests educate their children at home in part to shield them from the secular world — would be welcomed by the McCain camp.

Young conservative bloggers formed another part of Team Huckabee, getting the word out to Christian circles when he was still a relative unknown, and it will be of interest to see where this chattering class now tilts. 

As the Republican field narrowed, McCain picked up a larger share of the evangelical vote in the state-by-state nomination battles suggesting that he already has made inroads with this group.

But conservative Christian heavyweights such as James Dobson, founder and chairman of the advocacy group Focus on the Family, has already said that he won’t vote for McCain because of his support for stem-cell research and other positions that are beyond the Religious Right’s pale.

One thing is certain: this is an area that will be keenly watched. 

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- Photo credit: Reuters/John Gress

DALLAS - America’s evangelical movement is still growing and winning converts — with political implications that will likely be felt in this election cycle and beyond.

A new and extensive survey by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life released on Monday found that 26.3 percent of U.S. adults or one in four count themselves as evangelical Protestant.

That is higher than the widely cited one-in-five figure which is based on what denominations report to the National Council of Churches USA (NCC). But surveys and polls such as the one conducted by Pew can also catch people affiliated with churches that don’t report to the NCC.

Pew’s “U.S. Religious Landscape Survey”, based on interviews with more than 35,000 Americans age 18 and older, also shows that evangelicals outnumber Catholics who accounted for 23.9 percent of the survey’s respondents.

“The evangelical Protestant tradition is still growing but also becoming more diverse … so it may give them more clout in politics but because of their diversity it not be used in the same way,” John Green, a senior fellow at the Pew Forum, told journalists during a conference call about the survey.

White evangelical Protestants have emerged in the past three decades as a key base of support for the Republican Party, which has galvanized them to go to the polls by taking hardline stances against abortion rights and gay marriage.

But as Green and others have noted, they may in fact be splintering politically and moderating as their ranks grow –  perhaps because they are attracting more people with different priorities.

Having said that, all the available evidence to date suggests that most remain firmly in the Republican camp, even if the movement’s agenda is widening to embrace other Biblical concerns such as the environment.

Pew plans to follow up in the spring with a report on other findings from the survey which will look specifically at Americans’ religious beliefs and practices as well as their social and political views.

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- Photo credit: Reuters/Brian Snyder

DALLAS - James Dobson, the influential founder of the conservative, evangelical advocacy group Focus on the Family, has delivered a blow to John McCain — by saying he won’t vote for him if he’s the Republican presidential nominee.

“I am convinced Sen. McCain is not a conservative, and in fact, has gone out of his way to stick his thumb in the eyes of those who are … I cannot, and will not, vote for Sen. John McCain, as a matter of conscience,” he said in a statement on Tuesday.

“I believe this general election will offer the worst choices for president in my lifetime. I certainly can’t vote for Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama based on their virulently anti-family policy positions. If these are the nominees in November, I simply will not cast a ballot for president for the first time in my life,” he said.

Dobson said he was just expressing his views as a private citizen — but many of his millions of followers in the evangelical community, who listen to his radio show and read his books, will take it as a signal to do the same.

Dobson previously had said he would do the same if former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani became the Republican nominee. There was even talk among conservatives inside Dobson’s inner circle of supporting a third party candidate if Giuliani, who has since dropped out, carried the Republican crown.

Giuliani’s support for abortion and gay rights made him anathema in the eyes of conservative Christians, a key Republican base.

McCain has long opposed abortion rights. But Dobson said McCain’s failure to support a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage and his support for embryonic stem-cell research among other things were beyond the Christian conservative pale.

Click here for more Reuters 2008 campaign coverage. 

- Photo credit: Reuters/Jim Young