Yesterday when I blogged about Mitt Romney following John McCain’s lead on the speak-at-universities-run-by-right-wing-zealots front, I couldn’t have known that Howard Fineman of Newsweek would be thinking along the same lines.
Well, he is. In a “WEB-EXCLUSIVE COMMENTARY” on Newsweek.com (for the record, everything I write in this space is a WEB-EXCLUSIVE COMMENTARY) Fineman says that the three “kingmakers” of the right are Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, and James Dobson. Writes the very serious gentleman at right, “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).”
That means that after Papa McCain cozied up to Falwell and the good reverend made McCain his choice for the Repbulican nomination, Robertson had to go looking for another candidate to endorse (and influence, obviously). And that’s why we have news that Romney will be delivering the next commencement address at Robertson’s Regent University; the man who once said that George Bush would win in 2004 because the Lord had told him so has selected the First Mormon as his cause.
That leaves Dobson. He’s already said “I would not vote for John McCain under any circumstances” and, according to Fineman, has said the same about Giuliani. Fineman says that leaves Mike Huckabee, “the personable former Arkansas governor who also spent a good bit of his career as a Southern Baptist preacher.”
I can just see the campaign slogans now. “Huckabee ’08: Jesus Was a Dark Horse, Too!”
Wait, isn’t that a country song?
