Make no mistake. The religious right's influence on the Republican Party is strong.
It was the Values Voter summit this week (Oct. 11-13), and Jon Ward on Huff Post gives a sense of the Values Voter confab shenanigans:
Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas presided over a pep rally, telling the crowd at the Values Voter Summit that President Barack Obama fears them and that conservative believers can turn back the tide of liberalism. Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky expounded at length about the threat to Christianity and the West from radical Islam. And Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida pledged fealty to Jesus Christ and the American dream, while making sure never to mention immigration reform.
Right Wing Watch gives a who's who list for the Value Voter Summit 2013.
Here's a full list of speakers.
Jonathan Martin on The New York Times' Caucus blog reports that Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) met this week with religious right leaders. An excerpt:
A group of longtime Christian conservative activists are holding a private meeting Thursday in Washington to hear informal presentations from two of the most talked-about potential Republican presidential candidates: Senators Ted Cruz of Texas, and Rand Paul of Kentucky.
“This is not a fundraiser, nor an endorsement of U.S. Senator Rand Paul or U.S. Senator Ted Cruz, just a great opportunity for you to get to know them and discuss your ideas and views with them and hear of their lives, faith, and respective vision for our nation,” wrote Robert Fischer, a South Dakota-based conservative organizer, in an emailed invitation to dozens of evangelical Christian leaders.
The gathering is being held in conjunction with the Family Research Council’s Values Voters conference, an annual gathering of Christian conservatives in Washington, but it is not an official part of that event. Rather, it is being staged by a loosely-organized group of Republican leaders that call themselves “Conservatives of Faith.”
The hosts include Tony Perkins, the head of the Family Research Council, the former presidential candidate Gary Bauer, the conservative talk show host Janet Parshall and Richard Viguerie, the direct mail pioneer, along with a handful of others from the conservative movement. Mr. Fischer is the group’s chief organizer.
via thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com
Can you be a Republican who supports the rights, benefits, and responsibilities of a civil marriage contract being extended equally to same-sex couples?
Yes, but it sucks (or words to that effect), says Meghan McCain.
Even supposedly moderately-conservative Gov. Cris Christie of majority-Democratic New Jersey feels it's necessary to kowtow to the religious right by supporting discrimination against gay couples (via bad jurisprudence).
But take note: Christie blew off the Values Voter Summit this year.
Photo by Andrew Burton/Getty Images via the Dallas Morning News.
Over the last few years the religious right, rumored to be in decline, has receded from American secular consciousness. But amidst the current government shutdown, some of the more astute political analysts on the left, such BillMoyers.com producer Joshua Holland and the The Nation's Lee Fang are beginning to point out that, respectively, 1) today's Republican Party has, by objective measures, become truly radicalized and, 2) the main force behind the current government shutdown is the religious (and largely Christian) right.
