’08 Presidential Endorsements: Bob Likes Mitt, Fred likes Fred

I just went through my overfilled RSS feeds, skimming through about a week’s worth of articles, and based on a couple of items in particular that caught my attention, it looks like once again it’s duck season rabbit season endorsement season. The time during the 2008 Presidential campaign where political candidates are scrambling to earn critical endorsements that could give them an edge during the early primaries and a good amount of momentum toward party nomination.

One of the most significant ones from this past week was the endorsement of Mitt Romney by Bob Jones III, chancellor of Greenville, SC’s beacon of tolerance and understanding, Bob Jones University. AP/Google:

“We’re proud to have Dr. Jones’ support and look forward to working with him to communicate Governor Romney’s message of conservative change to voters,” Romney spokesman William Holley said in a statement.

Jones didn’t immediately respond to a message left Tuesday evening by The Associated Press. But he told a Greenville newspaper that supporting Romney is critical to make sure former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani doesn’t win the GOP nomination and that Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton doesn’t win the election.

“If it turns out to be Giuliani and Hillary we’ve got two pro-choice candidates, and that would be a disaster,” Jones told The Greenville News for a story on its Web site Tuesday.

Romney and Jones would appear to be a political odd couple, with the Southern fundamentalist Christian throwing his support behind the Mormon who was governor of Massachusetts.

But Jones said his endorsement came after he decided Romney would do the most to represent the average conservative American.

“As a Christian I am completely opposed to the doctrines of Mormonism,” Jones told the newspaper. “But I’m not voting for a preacher. I’m voting for a president. It boils down to who can best represent conservative American beliefs, not religious beliefs.”

While Jones certainly represents a good chunk of the Republican base, time will tell if his endorsement of Romney will do anything to erase the “cult” stigma that Mormonism has among the fundamentalists. We’re not so sure it’ll be enough of a boost. We’ll see.

Meanwhile, it looks like a sort-of endorsement earned by Fred Thompson more than twenty years ago may have come back to bite him. Again, AP/Google:

Members of the anti-gay Westboro Baptist Church are urging Fred Thompson to support their stance on homosexuality — a position on which they say the Republican presidential candidate once “saw eye to eye” with them.

Thompson was hired for a mid-1980s legal case in Kansas on the recommendation of Margie Phelps, daughter of Westboro founder Fred Phelps.

The Topeka, Kan.-based church is now best known for protesting at soldiers’ funerals, claiming their deaths are retribution for the nation’s acceptance of homosexuality.

Thompson campaign spokeswoman Karen Hanretty on Wednesday dismissed the church as “a radical fringe group, looking to draw attention to themselves.”

“Their behavior at the funerals of fallen soldiers is disgraceful and reprehensible,” she said. “In no way do these people share Fred’s values.”

Church members released an open letter to Thompson this week, saying he had discussed his views on homosexuality with them while handling the case of a woman who had sued the state’s Republican attorney general for sexual harassment.

“We know what your position used to be on the homosexual question — and it was wonderful, and we saw eye to eye,” church members said in the letter to Thompson.

That statement appears to conflict with comments made by Margie Phelps to the Journal-World of Lawrence, Kan., in June about her interaction with Thompson.

Wow. Between lobbying on behalf of a cruel Haitian dictator with a penchant for putting gasoline-soaked tires around people’s necks and lighting them on fire and canoodling with what the Southern Poverty Law Center has designated as a hate group… well, I guess those would serve as ringing, enthusiastic endorsements to some of Frederick of Hollywood’s base, wouldn’t they?