By Chris Burritt / Cox News Service
2-18-2000
SPARTANBURG, S.C. - As Saturday's Republican presidential primary
turns into a holy war for conservative Christian votes, Baptist
church deacon Walter Holmes figures John McCain is benefiting from
two endorsements.
One came from Republican primary dropout Gary Bauer, the social
conservative who campaigned with McCain on Thursday, a day after
declaring him the GOP's best hope for regaining the White House.
The other endorsement was Christian Coalition founder Pat
Robertson's backing of McCain rival George W. Bush.
Holmes believes that endorsement will help McCain, not Bush.
ÒI believe Pat Robertson is a loser in politics,Ó said Holmes,
73, attending a McCain rally Thursday outside Spartanburg. ÒThat
could hurt Bush.Ó
In the final furious days of campaigning, McCain is counting on
such seemingly unconventional wisdom to win in South Carolina, where
the nationally waning Christian Coalition still claims strong
support.
Some analysts say a victory by McCain in the neck-to-neck primary
would signal growing political diversity among South Carolina's
conservative Christians.
It also would suggest lessening influence by the state GOP's
conservative standard-bearers, including Bush supporters such as
former Gov. Carroll Campbell.
ÒThe Christian Coalition is not as unassailable as some people
think,Ó said Laura Woliver, a University of South Carolina political
scientist. ÒI think there is some splintering going on.Ó
But Ralph Reed, former Christian Coalition president now advising
Bush, said the conservative Christian vote Òis still very criticalÓ
and will determine who wins the South Carolina primary.
ÒYou can't win only with it, but you can't win without it,Ó said
Dee Workman Benedict, who helped organize Steve Forbes' campaign in
South Carolina before he dropped out earlier this month.
Benedict, 54, of Greenville, now supports McCain, reflecting a
split among Forbes' former supporters in the state.
While Bush is banking on traditional support from conservative
Republicans, McCain is appealing to conservative Democrats,
independents and former supporters of Forbes and Bauer, as well as
moderate Republicans.
Regardless of party affiliation, registered South Carolina voters
can participate in the Republican primary.
Conservative Christians cross party lines in the state. According
to analysts, they're expected to make up a third of Saturday's
turnout.
McCain and his supporters appealed to those voters in a flurry of
stops Wednesday and Thursday in the Upstate, the buckle of South
Carolina's Bible belt.
Sunday, McCain and his wife, Cindy, accompanied state House
Speaker Pro Tem Terry Haskins to Hampton Park Baptist Church in
Greenville.
Bob Jones III, president of Bob Jones University, is a member of
that church, the closest McCain came to reaching out to Jones'
influential network of alumni and other supporters.
After McCain criticized the fundamental Christian college's ban
on interracial dating and marriage, Jones said he would not be
invited to speak on campus.
After McCain won easily in New Hampshire's primary, Bush made his
first South Carolina campaign stop at the college. Pundits saw it as
a gamble by Bush that he would be more likely to appeal to Christian
conservatives than offend critics of the dating ban.
ÒThe conservative Christian vote is going to be split between
Bush and McCain over social issues,Ó said Haskins, 45, a Greenville
Republican who graduated from Bob Jones University in 1976.
Abortion and other right-to-life issues have emerged as the most
volatile, with McCain supporters accusing Bush backers of misleading
negative ads.
The National Right to Life Committee and its state affiliate,
South Citizens for Life, are airing radio commercials and mailing
fliers accusing McCain of voting to ''use tax dollars to pay for
experiments that use body parts from aborted babies.''
The groups' ads and mailings also accused McCain of making
''conflicting statements'' about his stance on Roe v. Wade, the 1973
Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion.
''They are driving up McCain's negatives,'' said Holly Gatling,
executive director of South Carolina Citizens for Life.
Haskins said McCain is being ''undermined by a systematic,
underground effort,'' including a widely distributed e-mail in which
Bob Jones University Professor Richard Hand denounced McCain as bent
on ''partying, playing, drinking and womanizing.''
''If those things he said about John McCain were true, Gary Bauer
would not be supporting him, and neither would I,'' Haskins said.
''The Bush forces in the state have been trying to demonize
McCain, with some success, but it is starting to backfire,'' said
Benedict, the former Forbes' official.
Haskins said Bauer's endorsement should offset criticism of
McCain as soft on abortion.
''Senator McCain has looked me in the eye, looked the American
people in the eye, and said that he thinks Roe v. Wade was wrongly
decided,'' Bauer said during McCain's campaign stop outside of
Spartanburg. ''I take him at his word.''
Bauer said he plans to help McCain ''in any way I can,'' but that
he didn't think McCain's campaign would need to tap into his
fund-raising network.
''I do not think he has a money problem, quite frankly,'' Bauer
said. ''The reaction after New Hampshire has been so dramatic, on
the Internet and otherwise.''
A former Forbes' supporter, Christian Coalition official Bette
Cox, said she couldn't support McCain because he ''flip-flops'' on
abortion.
''The majority of Christian Coalition county chairmen are
supporting Bush,'' said Cox, 56, chairman of Florence County's
Christian Coalition and first vice president of the state Republican
Party.
She said the coalition also opposed McCain's campaign reform
proposal because it would hurt fund-raising by such groups.
The coalition is so vehement in its opposition to McCain's brand
of campaign reform that the group ''overstepped the line'' in
endorsing Bush, said Lois Eargle, the coalition's chairman in Myrtle
Beach.
She said coalition fliers have misrepresented McCain's position
on abortion. She was so disgusted by such tactics that she plans to
resign from the coalition after South Carolina's primary.
''If the criticism is about campaign finance, then attack him on
campaign finance, not right to life,'' said Dan Griffith, a former
Forbes supporter who resigned last week from South Carolina Citizens
for Life.
