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 Bush, who was not invited to the Values Voter Summit last year,
was not able to attend this year, his campaign said. A Bush
spokeswoman said he had offered to send a video message to the
event, but a summit spokesman said the offer was declined.
Bush is not the only notable Republican candidate seeking to
represent the party in the November 2016 presidential election to
skip the event.
Former Hewlett-Packard chief Carly Fiorina, who at last week's
Republican debate gave the type of strong anti-abortion message that
social conservatives want to hear, will be in the early voting state
of Iowa instead.
Ohio Governor John Kasich, who frequently mentions his faith on the
campaign trail, will not attend either. Nor will New Jersey Governor
Chris Christie.
But religious conservatives said ahead of the event that Bush - a
convert to Roman Catholicism who was just in Washington to see Pope
Francis - could be missing a valuable opportunity to connect with an
influential part of the Republican voting base as he tries to
recover from the summer surge of Trump and expand his appeal.
"For the life of me I can't figure out Governor Bush's strategy for
the nomination," said Gary Bauer, former president of the Family
Research Council, which is staging the summit. "He's pro-life. He's
got plenty to talk about to this group."
Timothy Head, executive director of the Faith and Freedom Coalition,
another Christian conservative group, said evangelicals are
responding more enthusiastically right now to retired neurosurgeon
Ben Carson, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, former Senator Rick Santorum
of Pennsylvania and Senator Marco Rubio of Florida. All four will
appear at the event.
"They speak with a tremendous amount of conviction and resolve, and
I think that Jeb's style, his personality and personal countenance
is more contemplative and analytic," Head said.
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Bush has not shied away from the conservatives' "cattle calls" of
presidential candidates that populate campaign calendars. But Bush,
who has spoken at length of the role of religion in shaping his
political views, has not seen a need to attend them all.
For Trump, however, there is a clear need to convince evangelicals
that he is not dismissive of religion after he said in Iowa in July
that he had not asked God for forgiveness and referred to the
Communion wafer as a "little cracker."
In advance of the event, Trump gave an interview with political
journalist David Brody of the Christian Broadcast Network in which
he extolled the benefits of the Bible and said he had in fact asked
for forgiveness from God by way of taking Communion.
"I consider Communion to be a very important thing. When I go to
church and take Communion, I think that's asking for forgiveness in
my own way," Trump said.
(Editing by Jonathan Oatis)
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