With Romney's Exit, McCain Courts Conservative Base

Richard Land is the president of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission.

And David Bossie is president of Citizens United. It is a conservative nonprofit organization.

Gentlemen, good to have you both with us.

David Bossie, I'm going to start with you, because you were at that conference today. I want to make it clear you're not a Mitt Romney supporter. You were with Fred Thompson.

But tell us, what was the reaction in the room when he said he was suspending his campaign and then everybody heard from John McCain? What was the reaction?

DAVID BOSSIE, President, Citizens United: Well, there was a combination of disappointment by the Romney supporters. Mitt Romney gave a great speech. I will tell you, watching it, I said, "This guy has a long view of the world. He may be a candidate again."

He said the things that this crowd -- and, by the way, he came to this convention last year. He won the straw poll. He was the person that this conference supported for president last year, and John McCain came in dead last.

So it is a very interesting thing to have a year go by and see that. And I think that there was an excitement over John McCain that I didn't quite expect.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Really? Even though we heard one woman say, "Now there's not a real conservative in the race."

DAVID BOSSIE: Look, a lot of these people are the folks that you need to have stuff the envelopes, make the phone calls, knock on the doors. And John McCain has to energize and excite the party base, the conservative base of this country, in order to win in November.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And we'll talk about that in just a minute.

Dr. Land, you were not at the conference today, but you're obviously watching all of this with great interest.

RICHARD LAND, Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission: I was.

JUDY WOODRUFF: What does Romney's getting out mean? And how hard is it going to be for John McCain?

RICHARD LAND: Well, Romney's getting out means that the most likely challenger to John McCain is now out of the race. And I've known Governor Huckabee for 28 years. He's a great guy. But I don't think anyone but Governor Huckabee and his wife think that he has a realistic chance of beating John McCain to the nomination, given the delegate counts that are currently in place.

And so it effectively means John McCain -- barring some health catastrophe or barring some unknown scandal that no one knows about -- he's going to be the Republican nominee.

And I think that -- look, John McCain is pro-life. Now, if Rudy Giuliani had been the nominee, it would have split the party. But John McCain has a reliable pro-life record that goes back to his days in Congress. It's not spotless, but it's pretty reliable.

And, you know, the conservative rating groups give him an 80 percent to 85 percent rating on his voting record. He's a pretty conservative guy.

DAVID BOSSIE: Well, first of all, being pro-life is an outstanding bedrock principle that all conservatives really support, and it's one of the more important ones, but it's not the only one, just as the war on terror is not the only sole issue that they look to.

And that's why you have conservatives that are still nervous about John McCain's candidacy. If the job of president was solely to run the war on terror, I think he'd get my vote overwhelmingly. I'd be very excited about it.

But I'm nervous about judges. I'm nervous about immigration, very nervous about immigration.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Stop there. Judges, what worries you about John McCain...

DAVID BOSSIE: Well, he was one of the Gang of 14. And when you were part of the Gang of 14...

JUDY WOODRUFF: This is a group of senators...

DAVID BOSSIE: That really held up the works when it came to appointing and holding up some very courageous and quite outstanding judges that were appointed by -- nominated by President Bush a couple of years ago. And these mavericks, like John McCain, held the whole thing up.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And Dr. Land?

RICHARD LAND: Well, look, I opposed McCain on the Gang of 14. Philosophically, I don't believe that a Senate rule should interfere with the constitutional process of nominating judges.

The filibuster may be a helpful rule when you're trying to deal with legislation, but you can't confirm part of a judge. You either confirm all of a judge or none of a judge.

And the Constitution says that the Senate is to give an up-or-down vote and there doesn't have to be a supermajority for a judge, but McCain -- I opposed him on this philosophically. I was against the Gang of 14. I thought that they...

JUDY WOODRUFF: Just to be clear, they were trying to move through some of these nominees who were not acceptable.

RICHARD LAND: That's right. But Frist -- well, most of them ended up getting through, but Frist wanted to do away with the filibuster rule on judges, period, and the Gang of 14 cut a deal, and it was led by McCain.

It was McCain's posse. And they came together, and they said, "We're going to cut a deal to get most of these judges through, but we're not going to vote to end the filibuster." So the filibuster's still there.

But in the end, you know, John McCain, he voted for Alito, he voted for Roberts...

JUDY WOODRUFF: Justice Alito and Justice Roberts.

RICHARD LAND: ... and Justice Roberts. And it would be very helpful to him if he were to say, "These guys are my template when it comes to justices, strict constructionists, original intent jurists who will interpret the Constitution and not try to legislate from the bench."

DAVID BOSSIE: Well, it was cat call. Look, he got a very polite, in my opinion, response from the CPAC crowd. I, to be perfectly honest, came there expecting a lot tougher crowd.

But when it came to immigration, he said, "I've heard you." He didn't say, "I am wrong." He said, "I've heard you, and now I believe in securing the border first." He didn't say, "I no longer support amnesty."

And that is why conservatives and conservative leaders across the country are still a little leery about him. But, look, he's going to be better than Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama, so I think that the Republicans are going to come together at the end of the day.

RICHARD LAND: And it's important to note on immigration, too, that Evangelicals, at least, were pretty supportive of the Bush attempt and the McCain attempt to try to do this simultaneously. And McCain's admitted we can't do it simultaneously; we've got to secure the border first and then have some recommendations on how to deal with those who are here illegally.

JUDY WOODRUFF: What about tax cuts? There are clearly conservatives, fiscal conservatives who say they just can't, will not forgive him for going against the original Bush tax cuts.

RICHARD LAND: Well, you know...

JUDY WOODRUFF: And, in fairness, today, he said he's for making those cuts permanent.

RICHARD LAND: He is. He is now. And, you know, it's better late than never. I think that the one issue you haven't mentioned that has the most residual bitterness to it is McCain-Feingold.

JUDY WOODRUFF: This is campaign finance reform?

RICHARD LAND: Because there are many of us -- almost across the board among conservatives, we feel that this is an unconstitutional abridgment of Americans' First Amendment free speech rights. And, of course, the Supreme Court has already agreed with us on a major portion of it.

And we're also pretty irritated with George Bush for not vetoing it in the first place. But that's going to -- there's nothing McCain can do about that, because he still believes in campaign finance reform.

JUDY WOODRUFF: So you're prepared to overlook it, essentially?

RICHARD LAND: Well, when the alternative...

DAVID BOSSIE: I'm not.

RICHARD LAND: I'm prepared to overlook it when the alternative is Obama or Senator Clinton, because I think people who say, "Well, I just don't think conservatives will support McCain," they are woefully underestimating the ability of Senator Clinton or Senator Obama to unify conservatives.

DAVID BOSSIE: That's right. Let me just say this on McCain-Feingold. I am not going to overlook it, because I'm going to the Supreme Court. We have a case that's actually before the Supreme Court right now.

So we are fighting McCain-Feingold at every turn because of the free speech issue.

RICHARD LAND: And we may file a friend of the court brief and help you.

DAVID BOSSIE: We would like that.