Ben Carson, Ted Cruz, Jeb Bush, and other candidates prize Robert P. George’s advice on the thorniest social issues of the 2016 campaign. But he arrives at his own answers by befriending Cornel West and others who strongly disagree with him.

Robert P. George is not a political consultant. “I’m not Karl Rove or David—what’s his name?—Axelrod.” In fact, he says, “Any candidate who’d ask me for campaign advice should drop out immediately, because he’s too stupid to be running for president.” Yet few advisers are having more influence on conservative thinking this presidential campaign cycle. The McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence at Princeton, George is an unofficial counselor to several Republican hopefuls, including Ben Carson, Senator Ted Cruz, and Jeb Bush.

Senator Marco Rubio’s staff calls George, too, mostly on religious liberty issues, and Mike Huckabee has named him as the thinker whose work has most influenced him, though they’ve never met.

He’s also helping conservative officials all over the country wrestle with the recent ruling on same-sex marriage, or, as he puts it, “how ought we to think about, say, a Supreme Court decision where the Supreme Court has clearly overstepped its authority. And I might discuss that with, say, Senator Cruz, or anyone else who wanted to talk to me about it.”

Read the article “Half the GOP Field Seeks Advice from This Princeton Professor” on bloomberg.com.