A pair of recent major evangelical events created prime opportunities for the presidential candidates to appeal to the crucial Evangelical voter bloc.
Nikki Haley, Mike Pence, and Ron DeSantis attended both the Family Leadership Summit and the CUFI Washington Summit.
The Family Leader, an Iowa-based nonprofit comprising four organizations aimed at advocacy and activism for socially conservative causes, hosted the Family Leadership Summit. Bob Vander Plaats, a former high-school principal and three-time candidate for governor of Iowa, leads the group, which includes a policy center, a law firm specializing in religious liberty and conservative values cases, a marriage mentoring group, and a judicial watchdog organization.
Candidates at the Family Leadership Summit not only tried to appeal to Evangelicals but also sought to get the highly-coveted endorsement of Mr. Vander Plaats, whose endorsement is the Midas touch of Iowa politics. His endorsements of Mike Huckabee, Rick Santorum and Ted Cruz led to them winning the 2008, 2012 and 2016 Iowa Caucuses, respectively.
Haley
Ms. Haley’s appearance at the July 14 summit, where she talked about Washington’s fiscal irresponsibility, the cocaine discovered near the White House National Security Council, and other issues, resonated with the audience, who applauded her throughout her time on stage.Haley, the former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations and South Carolina governor, answered former Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson’s questions smoothly and did not appear challenged by Mr. Carlson’s questions. Mr. Carlson barely asked foreign policy questions, a surprise considering that Mr. Carlson, unlike Ms. Haley, is an isolationist.
Christians United for Israel is the largest pro-Israel group in the United States. Its leader is John Hagee, a pastor and major player in the GOP.
At the CUFI Washington Summit, which was held this year in Arlington, Va., Ms. Haley brandished her pro-Israel credentials from when she was South Carolina governor and U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. As governor, this included signing the first legislation to combat the antisemitic Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel, and as ambassador to Turtle Bay, included constantly standing up for the Jewish state.
She tried to make the case that America was in moral decay.
“There’s an explanation why our bipartisan consensus on Israel is falling apart. Too many of our fellow citizens have forgotten the principles that bind us together,” she said. ”We’ve lost trust in each other, and we’ve lost faith in God. We need to regain our pride and patriotism. And we need to remember… God is just getting started with America.”
Toward the end of her speech, in an apparent move to seal the deal with Evangelicals, Ms. Haley quoted from Scripture.
“We will fight the good fight. We will keep the faith. And yes, my friends, we will finish and win the race,” she said.
Ahead of her speech at CUFI, when asked by The Epoch Times whether the goal of the then-upcoming speech, like her appearance at The Family Leadership Summit, was to appeal to the Evangelicals, whom no GOP presidential candidate can win the party’s nomination without, Ms. Haley said it is multi-faceted.
“Well, first, it’s to be here with my friends. The Hagees are dear friends, dear family friends. We’ve traveled to [Washington] together, we’ve traveled to Israel together. We share a love of Israel. And so when they asked me to come, I’m always going to jump,” she said.
“But yes, we always want to continue to, one, remind the pro-Israel community the importance of having the backs of Israel,” continued Ms. Haley. “We want to put pressure on everybody that is not supporting Israel to understand that they are choosing the side of evil when they don’t do that as opposed to the side of good.
Pence
Mr. Pence’s Evangelical bona fides are well established, as are his conservative family values and political support for Israel. However, staunch supporters of former President Donald Trump view Mr. Pence with suspicion as many of them believe Mr. Pence’s actions on Jan. 6 handed the 2020 election to President Joe Biden.Many of those ardent Trump supporters are also Evangelicals.
Mr. Pence’s time at the Family Leadership Summit appeared to do little to win their support. He drew a cool reception from attendees, receiving only a smattering of applause upon introduction and even when mentioning his son, a Marine Corps pilot on active duty.
A few even booed when Mr. Pence said providing military aid to Ukraine serves a vital interest of the United States.
Mr. Carlson, a well-known skeptic of U.S. involvement with Ukraine and frequent critic of Mr. Pence, pressed the former vice president on several questions related to the war in that country and suggested that Mr. Pence cared more about providing tanks to Ukraine than helping Americans.
“Anybody that says that we can’t be the leader of the free world and solve our problems at home has a pretty small view of the greatest nation on earth,” Mr. Pence said.
“We can do both. And as President United States, we will secure our border; we will support our military; we will revive our economy, and stand by our values,“ he continued. ”And we will also lead the world for freedom under my administration. I promise you.”
Overall, the visit did not seem to win support for Mr. Pence, yet it did allow him to get his message of projecting American strength abroad, ensuring prosperity at home, and protecting the right to life before a key constituency.
At the CUFI summit, Mr. Pence received a much warmer welcome. He has a longstanding relationship with the organization, which presented him with its Defender of Israel award “in recognition of his faithful and enduring service to Israel and the Jewish people.”
Mr. Pence took the opportunity to reiterate his view that America must be the leader of the free world while highlighting the actions of the Trump-Pence administration, as he refers to it, that advanced the security of Israel.
Attendees applauded enthusiastically, some standing to their feet, as Mr. Pence mentioned moving the U.S. embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, acknowledging Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights, and withdrawing the United States from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.
“We demonstrated that an unambiguous stand with Israel actually makes peace more possible, not less possible,” he said to thunderous applause.
It was unclear, however, if the strongly pro-Israel attendees were applauding Mr. Pence or the state of Israel.
DeSantis
Tucker Carlson’s first question to Florida Gov. DeSantis at the Family Leadership Summit concerned abortion and the candidate’s recent signing of a heartbeat bill limiting abortions to the first six weeks of pregnancy. Mr. Carlson asked if he would seek the same as president.Mr. DeSantis saluted Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds for signing a similar bill that same day. Reynolds is popular with religious conservatives and emerging as a DeSantis ally, although she hasn’t formally endorsed him.
Mr. DeSantis could lean into his abortion record, also popular with religious conservatives. He was warmly received both by Carlson’s audience and a few days later at the CUFI summit.
“I’m proud to have been a pro-life governor, and I will be a pro-life president,” he told Carlson. “Of course, I want to sign pro-life legislation. I think it’s something that we need to develop, a culture of life in this country.
“If you look over the last 50 years, we allowed practices that were barbaric. Post-birth abortion, abortion when you have a fully formed baby six, seven months in.”
Mr. DeSantis said he’d use the “bully pulpit” to support pro-life governors like Ms. Reynolds. He anticipated it would take time to change pro-abortion Americans’ minds.
He was also candid about the political cost of taking a strong stand on it.
“I had a lot of supporters who were averse to me on this,” Mr. DeSantis said. “Donors saying they didn’t want to support me if I stood for life. It’s been written how I lost a lot of really big supporters. Some of them just aren’t pro-life. Some of them think it’s a political liability.
“At the end of the day, you get into office to be able to do what’s right. And you’ve got to stand on principle.”
At CUFI, Mr. DeSantis took a different slant facing an audience of Christians specifically gathered to support Israel, the Jewish state.
He talked of his wonderment, in several visits to Israel, in being able to “walk with a Bible in your hand, read the Bible and stand right where people like David and Jesus stood thousands and thousands of years ago. The Bible comes to life when you’re in Israel.”
A strong bond between the United States and Israel, said Mr. DeSantis, “comes from us knowing that the United States and Israel are in the same fight against the same tyrannical forces, including forces fueled by international terrorism, and it comes from the recognition that the United States of America was founded on Judeo-Christian values.”
He mentioned his strong support for Israel as a U.S. congressman: his opposition to funding for the Palestinians and his opposition to a United Nations that has targeted Israel. He highlighted his support for Trump-administration moves like moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem, recognizing Israel’s annexation of the Golan Heights, and the Abraham Accords, Israel’s historic establishment of ties with four Muslim nations.
Conservative Evangelicals overwhelmingly supported Mr. Trump in the last two elections, but that may not be the case in 2024, according to Daniel Darling, director of the Land Center for Cultural Engagement at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.
“Conservative evangelicals are obviously not monolithic,” Mr. Darling told The Epoch Times. “This is especially true for churchgoing evangelicals. I think many are pleased with the pro-life victories in the Trump administration but are likely looking to a new voice for the next four and possibly eight years.”
The three candidates were mostly well-received at both events, each of which targeted specific causes favored by many conservative Evangelicals. But policy is just a factor in gaining support from Evangelicals, according to Mr. Darling. The seeming authenticity of their Christian faith, while not strictly required, will be a plus.
“Like all voters, evangelicals will choose a president based on both policy and personality,” Mr. Darling said. “
“It’s not a requirement for most that the next President be a born-again believer with a conversion story, but all things being equal, those candidates who are more comfortable sharing their faith are going to have an advantage, especially in places like Iowa and South Carolina and in many of the super Tuesday states.”
Aryeh Lightstone, who was senior adviser to former U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman and attended the CUFI summit, told The Epoch Times that “amongst President Trump’s greatest accomplishments for the USA-Israel relationship is he completely removed the traditional box that all others operated in. The Republican candidates saw this, and in some cases, participated in these moments first hand, and they see Trump’s USA-Israel policies as the floor, not the ceiling.”
