Morris Chapman Gives Some Love To Freddy T

Fred Thompson has found more love from Southern Baptist leaders. An article in the Tuscaloosa News quotes Morris Chapman, President of the Executive Committee of the SBC, as saying...

"Another Southern Baptist called Fred Thompson the Ronald Reagan of the South, and I think he has some of that appeal. He is a magnetic personality. He seems to articulate his opinions clearly. He seems to be unflappable."

As I've documented in past posts, Richard Land of the SBC's Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission has spent most of his summer crushin on Hollywood Fred.

Past remarks from Dick Land include

"I'm around a lot of Baptists," Land said. "They find Fred Thompson to be a tantalizing combination of charisma, conviction and electability. He's got a Reaganesque ability to connect with ordinary folk that is powerful."

Land added: "He also has the same Teflon coating that Reagan had: Bad stuff just doesn't stick."

"This is Fred Thompson's race to lose" he said. "I have never seen anything like this
grassroots swell for Thompson. I'm not speaking for Southern Baptists, but I do believe I have my hand on the pulse of Southern Baptists and I think I know where the consensus is."

"Fred Thompson reminds me of a Southern-fried Reagan...To see Fred work a crowd must be what it was like to watch Rembrandt paint."

In the same Tuscaloosa News article, Marc Ambinder offers us a nice quote from Land on Romney....

"Clearly you have very significant segments of the population in the Southeast who are evangelical Christians, Southern Baptists and other faiths," said Richard Land, who heads the public policy arm of the Southern Baptist Convention. "Most of them want to know what the religious perspectives of the candidates are, and it's important to them. It's not determinative, but it's important."

While Land thinks Romney's religion could be a problem, he said the former governor's pro-life stance might prove more important.

"There is no issue that matters more to most evangelicals than the issue of the life of the unborn," Land said.

If no issue matters more to Southern Baptists than abortion then why are Land and Chapman so quick to jump on the Fred Thompson bandwagon?

Like Romney, Thompson also has a spotty abortion record. First, there is the report that Thompson was hired by an abortion-rights organization to lobby the first Bush administration. But more importantly, in 1994 Thompson wrote that the "ultimate decision" about abortion is a woman's and that government should not intervene. On other questionnaires, Thompson declared his opposition to both criminalizing abortion and a constitutional amendment "protecting the sanctity of life."

At least for Romney's sake, he claims to have had traveled down Damascus Road. Meanwhile, James Dobson has gone so far as to question whether Freddy T has ever had a salvific experience.

Nonetheless, Scott Helman of the Boston Globe recently declared:

Dissatisfied with the current crop of GOP contenders, these conservative leaders say Thompson, despite new questions about his record on abortion, possesses the right combination of electability and conservative values -- the two ingredients they believe are necessary to energize evangelical voters and keep the White House in Republican hands in 2008.

"It's almost as if the man and the moment met," said Richard Land, who speaks for more than 16 million people as head of public policy for the nation's Southern Baptists.

Why does it seem that Land's first priority is Republican success in '08?