James Dobson’s 180-degree turnabout on John McCain has God-o-Meter thinking: has the candidate who’s famously inept on religious outreach seen the light and picked up the phone to call Colorado Springs?
Dobson went a lot further than he needed to in his Obama-bashing broadcast yesterday. He could have bashed Obama and left it at that. But he spent roughly the last quarter of the show making a case–a qualified one for McCain. Would Dobson, who has probably set records for grudge-holding (he reportedly didn’t talk to best bud Gary Bauer for years after Bauer endorsed McCain in 2000), have so suddenly warmed to McCain without a good amount of wooing?
Another curious note from yesterday’s Dobson broadcast: Focus on the Family urged listeners to check out the Newsweek cover story on Obama’s faith life. That means Focus believes its evangelical listeners care a lot about the specifics of a candidate’s faith and where it leads them personally and politically. The Obama campaign and the Democratic Party, by contrast, believe that convincing voters that they have faith and that it informs their lives and politics is enough to pick up a good number of new religious voters.

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