(CBS) Political Players is a regular conversation with the leaders, consultants, and activists who shape American politics. This week, CBS News' Brian Goldsmith talked with one of the nation’s key evangelical leaders, Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission about John McCain’s campaign and his upcoming vice presidential selection.
...
CBSNews.com: A number of evangelicals and leaders of what used to be called the religious right have said that what they're really looking for--to determine whether they hold they nose when they vote for McCain, or whether they go in enthusiastically and bring their friends--is the person he chooses to be his running mate. What are you and the people you represent looking for in that running mate?
Richard Land: First of all, I agree with that assessment. I think that the vice presidential choice that John McCain makes is probably the most important choice he's going to make in this entire campaign. Because he has no room for error, no margin for doubt. If he picks a pro-choice running mate, it will confirm the unease and the mistrust that some evangelicals--and don't forget this, social conservative Catholics--feel about McCain.
If he picks a pro-life running mate, it will help to ease their concerns and confirm to them that, while he may not have been their first choice, he may not have been their second choice, that it's better to vote for a third class fireman than it is to allow a first class arsonist to become president.
CBSNews.com: Who’s on the list of people mentioned for VP that you think would most excite Southern Baptists and other members of the conservative faith community?
Richard Land: Probably Governor Palin of Alaska, because she's a person of strong faith. She just had her fifth child, a Downs Syndrome child. And there's a wonderful quote that she gave about her baby, and the fact that she would never, ever consider having an abortion just because her child had Downs Syndrome. She's strongly pro-life.
She's a virtual lifetime member of the National Rifle Association. She would ring so many bells. And I just think it would help with independents because she's a woman. She's a reform Governor. I think that, from what I hear, that would be the choice that would probably ring the most bells, along with Mike Huckabee, of course, who's a Southern Baptist.
Maybe easy to overlook because all the faux press speculation circulated on Obama's pick - to Hillary or not to Hillary, that was the question. (To Hillary was to be weak - to not Hillary was to sell out the Hillary supporters - worst of all, Obama planned to text his supporters rather than simply inform the kewl kids in the press korpse - so, they spent a lot of time and energy trying to get the inside story first).
