Romney Supporter Brings Justin Bieber Into 2012 Campaign

By Andrew Belonsk

Big-time evangelical leader Mark DeMoss sent out a memo this weekend urging his peers to back potential 2012 contender Mitt Romney over Sarah Palin or Mike Huckabee, whom he implied were incompetent and nothing more than Justin Bieber-like icons for the political set.

[Mitt Romney may not get a crowd going like Justin Bieber, but they both have great hair!]

Instead of a “litmus test” measuring social values, like pro-life politics and anti-gay agendas,DeMoss’ letter suggested evangelical leaders evolve their prerequisites to include more pragmatic concerns, like acumen and competence.

“A candidate for president of the United States should be capable of becoming president, and then competent to be the president,” wrote DeMoss in his note celebrating Romney, the former CEO of Bain Capital, a management consulting firm he helped found, and one-term Massachusetts governor.

“Those who would suggest I am placing values on the back burner will be misreading me and wrong. I am only saying that a candidate’s values alone are not enough to get my vote,” DeMoss wrote to about 200 donors, pastors and other leaders.

“For example, my pastor shares my values, but I don’t want him to be my president. (By the way, ‘energizing a crowd’ is also not enough; Justin Bieber can do that—but I don’t want him to be president either.)”

Nor could Bieber win: he’s a Canadian citizen, and we all know how America loves to question presidential birth records.

Though DeMoss, the president of a conservative public relations firm, didn’t mention Palin and Huckabee by name in the Bieber joke, their approval ratings and reputations make it clear he’s referring to the former governors, especially since he called them out while citing this weekend’s New Hampshire Republican party straw poll, which Romney won with 39 percent. Palin came in with 16 percent and Huckabee rounded out the top three with 10 percent.

DeMoss goes on to say that he hopes their collective efforts can turn Romney into the next George W. Bush.

“Realizing that [few potential contenders] have a realistic shot at defeating President Obama, we can give someone who does a quicker path to the nomination so he has more time to mobilize a general election campaign,” instructed DeMoss. “This is essentially what happened for George W. Bush prior to the 2000 election cycle. He had so much early support and so many endorsements he was virtually unstoppable in his quest for the nomination—momentum which then carried him to victory over Al Gore.”

Yeah, we need another contested presidential election like we need another pre-teen pop star.

But the 2012 election’s still over a year away, and no major Republican has officially announced their candidacy, so for now DeMoss will simply have to content himself with his mastery of the politically outrageous. Nicely done!

y Monday, January 24, 2011