Richard Land endorsed Palin for McCain's VP earlier this month

[Solly Mack]

Southern Baptist Convention public policy chief - Richard Land


"Richard Land: Probably Governor Palin of Alaska, because she's a person of strong faith. She just had her fifth child, a Downs Syndrome child. And there's a wonderful quote that she gave about her baby, and the fact that she would never, ever consider having an abortion just because her child had Downs Syndrome. She's strongly pro-life.

She's a virtual lifetime member of the National Rifle Association. She would ring so many bells. And I just think it would help with independents because she's a woman. She's a reform Governor. I think that, from what I hear, that would be the choice that would probably ring the most bells, along with Mike Huckabee, of course, who's a Southern Baptist.

On Mitt Romney, meanwhile, Land is personally enthusiastic but says a good chunk of evangelicals would oppose him on religious grounds"





Media Matters : Who is Richard Land

"Land has connections to both President Bush and the Republican Party. As Land's online biography notes, "President George W. Bush appointed Dr. Land to two terms on the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (September 2001 to September 2004)." In its post-election roundup of the election's winners and losers, TIME magazine noted on November 15: "As director of the political arm of the Southern Baptist Convention, Richard Land has enjoyed a long and close relationship with the born-again Bush. And when the President was forming his position on stem-cell research, Land helped convince the President to prohibit new embryos from being used in the research." The Miami Herald noted in a October 24, 2002, article that Land was a key supporter of Bush's decision to invade Iraq, drafting a letter to Bush in 2002 stating that "we believe that your stated policies concerning Saddam Hussein ... are prudent and fall well within the time-honored criteria of just war theory.""