BOB ABERNETHY, anchor: This week: the Iowa caucuses. The two winners, Illinois senator Barack Obama and former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, both talked openly about their faith, and our managing editor Kim Lawton says both men had an active faith-based outreach strategy.
Kim, welcome. Let’s start with Obama. To what extent did religion play a role in his campaign?
KIM LAWTON: It played a huge role and one that I think is not widely acknowledged. He had a very active effort to court people of faith, including some of those evangelical voters. He held a series of faith forums across Iowa. A lot of times he didn’t personally show up. His campaign had these meetings for people of faith, so it was under the radar partly because he wasn’t there, but he brought people together to talk about social justice and moral issues. His campaign, actually on the Web site, had a phone number that the week before the Iowa caucuses every day people could call at 8:30 in the morning and pray for Barack Obama’s campaign there. So it was very intense and very targeted.
ABERNETHY: And Huckabee got a big amount of support from evangelicals. Let me ask you this: when an evangelical Christian goes to a caucus and votes for, stands up for Huckabee, thinks about voting for Huckabee, what does that person see in him?
The only problem with Huckabee and most of the Republican candidates is that they simply are not conservative.