The ‘Value Voters’ ( how can anyone say that with a straight face?) crowd had their big meeting in Washington this weekend sponsored by various political evangelical parachurch groups.
The Republican presidential candidates dutifully showed up for their pandering and pitches.  Attendance was estimated at about 2 thousand.

This is a black and white thinking, authoritarian political crowd whose leaders made more news than usual when their Council on National Policy leaked it’s secret meeting in Utah last month.
Most Americans had never heard of this group, now more have and are, which is a good thing for America.  A lot of money and a lot of power has been getting together behind closed doors since the 1980’s with little scrutiny.

The social and economic conservative divides in the Republican Party have been spilling out around the US ever since the Utah meeting was deliberately leaked.

US evangelicals make up about 25% of the electorate, and in some areas of the US if you are not a Republican values voter you can be kicked out of your church. (Being kicked out is extreme - lesser pressures and tactics are often used to keep church goers politically compliant) But then again extremism has always been part of the package being sold.

The secret group is meeting again this weekend to work on their king making. They may ‘release’ their followers to vote by conscience rather than follow through on their threat to leave the Republicans and form a third  party (as a matter of their principle) if leaders feel they don’t have a clear horse to back in the Republican race.

The top issues for the conference attendees were:

1. Life
2. marriage
3. tax cuts
4. permanent tax relief for families

The conference straw poll results are at The Family Research Council blog.

The go-to-blog for coverage of this conference for me has been  Faith in Public Life. The writer (Dan) live blogged, he knows the players, the language and policies, and cut to the wants of this voter bloc with a sanguine humour and sharp posts.
Scroll through, there is plenty of coverage, commentary and comments.
The Atlantic’s Marc Ambinder also covered this conference with clarity.

David Kuo at -J-Walking (a former Faith Based Initiatives staffer)  is not impressed.

Just in case there was ANY doubt about how little Christian conservative leaders care about the poor, here is their list of big issues on their presidential straw poll being taking this weekend:

3. Please indicate which issue is the most important in determining your opinion of the candidate that you will most likely vote for?Abortion
Same-sex ‘marriage’
Embryonic stem cell experiments
Tax cuts
Prayer in schools
Public display of the Ten Commandments
Federal ‘hate crimes’ legislation
The reinstatement of the ‘Fairness Doctrine’
Taxpayer funding for abortions
Permanent tax relief for families
Voluntary, student-led prayer in public schools
Enforced obscenity laws

Traditional media coverage has been average.

There is another faith summit in the endless race being held in November that looks more like America,  and it is unlikely to receive major media coverage. No presidential candidates have confirmed, this are tougher issues to talk about.
via: The Caucus, the NYT political blog;

Meanwhile, a broad alliance of religious leaders, some of them also conservative Christians, is trying to persuade the candidates that the faith and values agenda is larger than those issues.

They are inviting Republican and Democratic candidates to speak at back-to-back “Compassion Forums” on Nov. 26 in Greenville, South Carolina, an early primary state.

They want to ask the candidates where they stand on climate change, torture, poverty in the United States and abroad, and genocide in Darfur – as well as abortion. Backing the event is an unusual left/right alliance of evangelical, Catholic, Jewish and Muslim religious leaders who only recently would have made very strange bedfellows indeed: including Dr. Frank Page, President of the Southern Baptist Convention; Dr. Paul R. Corts, President, Council for Christian Colleges and Universities; Rev. Jim Wallis, founder of the liberal group Sojourners and author of “God’s Politics;” Dr. Syeed Sayeed, general secretary of Islamic Society of North America; Rev. Samuel Rodriguez, President of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference; and Bishop Vashti McKenzie, of the African Methodist Episcopal Church.

David Brody at CBN (yes Pat Robertson’s outfit) has also done a decent job of covering the FRC led extravaganza at The Brody File. He’s a good reporter, and good reporters can and do work for odd outlets. He is well worth a read.

I’d like to see David Domke,  Associate Professor, Communications Department; University of Washington who blogs occasionally at Street Prophets, chime in.
He is a wiz at dissecting the nuance of political language with a clarity the average person can grasp and has sharp analysis of the speeches and  language the extreme social conservatives used in these regular FRC sponsored conferences.

Meantime Bible Belt Blogger muses about the spin and what will be the continuing spin cycle and finds a great quote about the  poll results and the rumblings of discontented delegates. Joe Carter of The Evangelical Outpost is Director of Web Communications for the FRC.  He is the new media guy - wouldn’t he be the one to complain to about freeping an online poll?

While surban evangelicals conferencing in Washington about Repubican presidental candidates is of little import to Canadians, we can certainly learn how effectively voters learn to embrace the politics of fear.

Moderation is a fatal thing. Nothing succeeds like excess. - Oscar Wilde