At a time when we are constantly being told that no one in America cares about anything other than the economy, one of Wingnut World’s most durable forums for people who intensely care about cultural issues was held this last weekend. The Value Voters Summit, sponsored by the Family Research Council, attracted every significant GOP presidential candidate other than Jon Hunstman. But as has often been the case, the controversial nature of the event’s sponsors and speakers overshadowed anything the candidates had to say.
Most notably, Robert Jeffress, a Southern Baptist minister from Dallas who was asked by conference sponsors to introduce Rick Perry (he’s a long-standing supporter of his governor and one was one of the pillars of Perry’s big prayer event back in August), made big waves by going out of his way to tell reports he regarded Mitt Romney’s LDS church as a “cult.” This is an old refrain for Jeffress, but casting the Republican presidential nominating contest as a war of religious identity in which Christians should follow Perry was sure to grab headlines. Moreover, one of the main speakers at the event was Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association (a major Value Voters Summit co-sponsor), who lived down to his reputation as a purveyor of all sorts of bigotry, mainly aimed at gays, Muslims and Mormons. Romney, who preceded Fischer at the podium, was driven to an indirect swipe at him for “crossing a line,” which of course just gave Fischer a new excuse to whine about being persecuted.
The whole series of events led some commentators to wonder if a sustained attack on Romney’s religion, with or without the complicity of Rick Perry, had been launched to stiffen resistance to the 2012 front-runner among white conservative evangelicals.
The presidential candidate who was most successful in cutting through all the distractions at the Value Voters Summit was Herman Cain, whose stock speech is still blowing the doors off in conservative gatherings. He got a lot of standing ovations, but perhaps the biggest greeted his assurance that he and other African-Americans had nothing to be angry about thanks to the opportunities they’d received as Americans.
On a more formal level, Ron Paul registered at the event by winning its Straw Poll by a comfortable margin. The ability of his supporters to routinely dominate straw polls (except for those like August event in Iowa that attracted many thousands of attendees, or the P5 straw poll in Florida where voters were delegates elected months earlier) simply by flooding the room has seriously eroded the news values of his wins.
As the presidential candidates prepared for another debate on Tuesday, polls continued to document an ongoing collapse in support for Rick Perry and a corresponding surge for Herman Cain—not just in national surveys, but in the states that play an early role in the nominating contest. In Iowa, where no public polls were released during September, and late August polls showed Perry romping into an immediate lead, two surveys from NBC-Marist and Public Policy Polling came out this week documenting Perry’s slide into fourth or fifth place, and Cain’s rise to a position rivaling Mitt Romney. Since the Iowa Caucuses require both grassroots support and a strong organization to bring it out on a cold winter night, Cain’s weak organization in the state makes actual success in the caucuses more problematic (conversely, Perry is thought to have a very good Iowa organization). Aside from the Perry-Cain dynamic, the new numbers from Iowa show how tempting it is becoming for Mitt Romney to leap into Iowa (which he’s largely avoided, no doubt because of the high cost he paid for losing Iowa in an upset in 2008) and pursue an early knockout with a run through Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada, the first three stops on the primary trail.
When the candidates assembled in New Hampshire on October 11 for a Bloomberg/WaPo debate focused on the economy, most attention was devoted to Cain, who predictably drew criticism of his signature 9-9-9 tax proposal; Romney, who had emerged from the ashes of Perry’s early ascendency to regain front-runner status (a trend punctuated by an early endorsement from Chris Christie); and Rick Perry, who needed a gaffe-free debate and some renewed sense of attachment to the hard-core conservatives who had been abandoning him for Herman Cain. The general take is that Romney cruised (getting in an extended crowd-pleasing attack on China’s commercial policies and taking a shot at Perry’s indifference to the plight of the uninsured in Texas). Cain did well but opened himself to further trouble on the details of 9-9-9 (Santorum drew some blood pointing out that the plan’s new national sales tax would not be popular in NH). Perry made no mistakes, but made no gains; RedState’s Erick Erickson concluded he was “rapidly becoming the Fred Thompson of the campaign season,” a deadly comparison given Thompson’s high potential and quick fade in 2008.
Aside from the debate’s horse-race nature, it reinforced once again how far the entire field has drifted from what used to be considered the mainstream of political discourse. All the candidates agreed the housing and financial crises of 2008-2009 were entirely created by the federal government, not the financial sector, and most implied excessive lending to the poor and minorities was a big part of the problem. All the candidates appear to favor deliberate deflationary monetary policies. All the candidates who spoke on the topic rejected any budget compromise that involved either tax increases or defense cuts. Two candidate, Michele Bachmann and Newt Gingrich, told egregious lies about the relationship between “ObamaCare” and Medicare, pursuing the old “death panel” meme with renewed vigor. And to cap it all off, when Rick Perry was asked a direct question about income inequality, he didn’t seem to grasp the problem at all.
It looks like the eventual winner will have to bring a translator along when it’s time to debate the president. Many Americans don’t speak wingnut.
