PR big shot Mark DeMoss, one of Mitt Romney’s most powerful and active evangelical backers, is well suited to join today’s debate on whether Christian Right leaders are forsaking the evangelical grassroots by declining to support Mike Huckabee. After all, DeMoss’s clients include Franklin Graham, and Chuck Colson’s Prison Fellowship.
Here’s how DeMoss handled a few Huckabee questions on the phone Wednesday morning:
Are you worried that Mike Huckabee, with his ecstatic reception at the Values Voter Summit last weekend and his strong showing in recent Iowa polls, threatens Mitt Romney’s claim on “values voters?”

Huckabee is arguably the best orator in the field, the best speaker. But what apparently wins campaigns and elections is organization, which involves money and staff and television time and field offices and field organizers and volunteer strength. To suggest that [Huckabee’s] showing at one conference suggests a surging campaign needs to be backed up with evidence of strength in other areas. That wasn’t Huckabee’s first good speech—he’s been doing it everywhere he goes…. But the last tallies I saw, Ron Paul has raised three times more than Huckabee and Brownback raised about twice as much and he’s out of the race. We’re not electing a champion orator. It would be difficult to run a country if you cannot run a major league campaign.

It sounds like you’re telling Christian voters to use their heads over their hearts.

Use them both, but don’t just use your heart. If a conservative evangelical just used his heart they might vote for Alan Keyes. And if you want to talk about oratory skills, a lot of people would say Keyes is the best orator.
People can complain and say the presidential campaign is too long, it started too early, that the primaries are packed too tightly. But the winning candidate has to know how to do it. Part of becoming president is being able to make a case that makes people want to give you money. If you can’t manage a staff of 150 or 200 people and a handful of regional offices and recruit volunteers and raise money, I don’t know how you manage the government with a 3 trillion dollar budget and a couple million employees.

So viability is the most important consideration?

Huckabee has a fair complaint when he says if all the people who say they like me but don’t think I’m viable would support me, I’d be viable. However, I’m not in the category of people who is not supporting Huckabee because I don’t think he’s viable. I just don’t think he’s the most qualified to be president. To me, Mitt Romney is not the lesser of a group of evils. He’s my choice, the person I’d like to be president.

DeMoss laid out his rationale for backing Romney in a recent letter to scores of Christian conservatives. To hear him tell it, the Christian Right brass is actually being principled in withholding support from Huckabee because it is resisting the siren song of identity politics.