At the annual A Night to Honor Israel banquet in Washington on Tuesday night, here’s what spurned televangelist John Hagee told the assembled:
What will I say when I’m asked to endorse another presidential candidate? Never Again!
According to the New York Times, the crowd greeted the line with applause.
Whoa.
So a ballroom full of some of the nation’s most politically inclined evangelicals (this event was in Washington, sponsored by Hagee’s Christians United for Israel, and featured Senator Joe Lieberman) applaud a major evangelical figure’s vow to forego endorsing anymore presidential candidates? Isn’t this the Christian Right’s worst nightmare?
After fighting for decades to get evangelicals to shed their political inhibitions, are folks like James Dobson going to abide a fellow leader urging them to take a few steps back from presidential politics?
Hagee’s message encapsulates one of McCain’s greatest dangers: evangelicals getting the message that they might want to sit this election out.
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