Some analysts say the Religious Right is dead. Yet every Republican presidential contender has agreed to appear at the conference – even Rudy Giuliani.
Today and tomorrow, the top guns of the Religious Right are meeting in Washington, D.C., to screen the Republican presidential candidates.
The so-called “Values Voter Summit” is sponsored by Family Research Council Action, the action arm of the Family Research Council (FRC), along with Focus on the Family Action, the Alliance Defense Fund, American Family Association Action and Gary Bauer’s American Values group.
Some analysts say the Religious Right is dead. Yet FRC, Focus and their allies have enough clout that every Republican presidential contender has agreed to appear at the conference – even Rudy Giuliani. The former New York mayor is coming even though he’s been on the receiving end of numerous Religious Right attacks lately. In fact, Dobson has threatened to support a third-party candidate if Giuliani gets the GOP nomination.
FRC leaders say they went through the formality of inviting all of the Democratic contenders too. None agreed to attend. This is not surprising, as anyone who reads FRC materials can attest. The conference will undoubtedly feature a generous amount of bashing of people like Al Gore, U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton and U.S. Sen. Barack Obama.
In between hearing from presidential hopefuls, meeting attendees will listen to incendiary speeches on the standard Religious Right obsessions: gays, abortion, evolution, religion in public life, etc. Several sessions deal with the role of churches in politics. If these events are anything like the ones held at last year’s meeting of the FRC, a lot of bad advice will be distributed.
It’s unclear how many people will attend this event at the Washington Hilton, but FRC gatherings in past years have attracted 1,000 to 1,500 people, and conference organizers say as many as 2,000 might show up this time. FRC and Focus have a combined budget of nearly $153 million annually. FOF founder James Dobson broadcasts to an estimated five million people daily.
Reporters are expected to converge on this event, mainly to hear what the presidential candidates have to say. A more interesting avenue to explore might be why the contenders are appearing at all, if the Religious Right is supposedly on the ropes. Perhaps this summit will be enough to convince the media pundits that the Religious Right is not quite the spent force in American politics that some seem to think it is.
The Washington Times reported yesterday that after the meeting, Religious Right leaders will gather to assess their situation. “In a closed-door Sunday conference organized by American Values President Gary Bauer, the heads of several Christian and conservative groups are slated to try to settle on one candidate, but agreed that if no consensus is reached, they will be free to go public with their disunity and support various candidates,” reported the conservative paper.
Several Religious Right activists told The Times they do not expect consensus to emerge. Stay tuned. This story definitely is not over.
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