Look, I'll hate whatever you tell me to.

Look, I'll hate whatever you tell me to.

While Wisconsin Governor and likely Republican presidential candidate Scott Walker is a favorite among business leaders looking for favors and wealthy Americans keen on slashing government to the bone if they can shave a quarter-point off their effective tax rates, among the evangelical crowd he's a bit of an also-ran. What's he done for them lately?

So Walker is off to do some fence-mending and appropriate knee-bending.



Next week, the Wisconsin governor will travel to Capitol Hill to hold a private meeting with influential evangelical leaders, some of whom are expressing deep reservations about his track record on issues near and dear to them. Pointing to his past statements, and even his hire of a top campaign aide, they are openly questioning whether his views on abortion and gay marriage align with theirs and whether he’s willing to fight for their cause.

“Clearly he’s not well known within Washington, D.C., with social conservative leaders. He’s more known for his battle with unions in Wisconsin,” said Tony Perkins, the president of the Family Research Council and one of about 50 people invited to huddle with Walker. “I think people are wondering, ‘Where does he stand?’”

There may once have been a time when there was more to having religion than an obsessive policing of other people's sex lives, perhaps there was a bit of caring for the sick or feeding the poor or loving thy neighbor in there, toward the back, but no more. Support all the wars you want, give your personal thumbs-up to the death penalty and to state-sanctioned torture, tell impoverished Americans or people without health insurance that you're very sorry for their plight but you'll be dead in the cold ground before your government does a damn thing for them—it's all fine. But you'd better have the right opinion on abortion and keeping the gay people in line.Where he stands is that he really, really dislikes middle class people, Wisconsin's education system and rules protecting workers or the places where they live. Sounds like just your brand of Jesus to me, fella.

It should be noted that the groups Walker's team is trying to court are Tony Perkins' Family Research Council, which is a hate group, and other far-right crackpot organizations like the Concerned Women for America. And their problem with them is that while he's anti-abortion and anti-gay-Americans, he's not nearly full-throated enough in his condemnations of those things. That's not going to fly with these groups, who have an ample selection of other, better lunatics to choose from. Mike Huckabee is all about Tony Perkins' toxic mix of anti-gay bigotry and false statements about LGBT Americans; there's no way for Scott Walker to compete with that without personally starting each rally by punching a gay American in the face.

Walker isn't too likely to make inroads with this crowd, and the reason is precisely why evangelicals are angry with him in the first place. Walker's campaign style is one of studiously saying nothing at all; he speaks only in the vaguest of generalities, and takes definable positions on issues almost never. Among all of the candidates, he is by far the most studious in playing both sides of every fence, and the evangelical crowd, which demands both purity and loud proclamations of loyalty, cannot stand that. Where other observers might see Walker's mealy mouthed statements on social issues as pandering or obvious filmflammery, the far right sees disloyalty. He'll not be getting their support until and unless their preferred, louder candidates (see: Ted Cruz, Huckabee, even Rick Freaking Santorum) bow out.

Until then, Walker's team mostly seeks to prevent the far-right from engaging in open warfare with him. He can't get their votes, not with his style of rigorously enforced vapidity, but he needs to avoid becoming a primary target.

