National Clergy Council leader worried about McCain

Rob Schenck, the head of the National Clergy Council, says by voting in overwhelming fashion for former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee in Republican presidential primaries, evangelical voters are sending the message that John McCain is not their nominee. 

White born-again and evangelical voters lined up strongly behind Huckabee in Tuesday's Virginia GOP primary. Exit polls show he won 63 percent of the evangelical vote in the Commonwealth. And twice as many white born-again and evangelical Christian voters participated in this year's Virginia GOP primary compared with eight years ago in the last contested GOP presidential primary.
 
Pastor and conservative activist Rob Schenck, president of Washington-based Faith and Action, says if Senator McCain (R-Arizona) ends up winning the nomination, evangelicals like himself will be placing "tectonic pressure" on McCain to put forward "the right issues, the right concerns, [and] the right principles" in his campaign.
 
"I'm talking about the sanctity of life, marriage and the family, [and the] public acknowledgement of God," Schenck explains. "[Those issues] not only threaten to go on the back burner of a McCain administration, but they may likely never surface at all."
 
Also of concern to Schenck is the presence of the senator's chief advisor, former Senator Warren Rudman (R-New Hampshire). He says Rudman is responsible for putting one of the worst members of the Supreme Court on the bench, and to see him as one of McCain's advisors is "deeply distressing."
 
Schenck says meeting and talking with Christian leaders is not enough. He contends McCain must demonstrate that he is "committed beyond the point of no return" to the core moral and spiritual issues that drive evangelicals and other moral conservatives.