This really is troubling:
Some leading conservative activists say they plan to screen 2008 Republican presidential hopefuls, perhaps as early as this fall, in hopes of finding a candidate they can endorse as a group.
Religious and social conservatives, long an influential power center within the Republican Party, have been stepping up their efforts in the months since the 2004 election, when conservative Christian voters played a key role in helping President Bush gain a second term.
With an eye toward the post-Bush succession fight, Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, said yesterday that he and other conservative activists would like to “interview some of the candidates” sometime this fall and determine whether a single candidate merits their support.
I don’t care who is doing this- the religious right is well within their rights to screen whoever they want, whatever I think about Tony Perkins. What troubles me is that it is tarting ALREADY.
It is 2005. Bush was sworn in less than five months ago. The permanent campaign is upon us.
Geek, Esq.
I fully support them. They MUST stop RINO’s like John McCain and that gay-loving, abortionist-enabling Rudy Giuliani.
Bill Frist in 2008!
Tony Alva
It is WAY too early to tell, but the next election will surely divide the hypechristian element from the secular conservatives unless the prez or the wingnuts don’t render themselves irrelevent in the next three years all by their lonesome (my hope is that they will).
Otherwise, the party will split and the White House will be lost. I’m taking bets right now.
Shawn
I nominate Bill Frist. He loves animals, especially cats. That’s important to me.
Jon H
More like a permanent crusade.
Kimmitt
the next election will surely divide the hypechristian element from the secular conservatives
Dude, you’re wishing on a star; the secular conservatives hate the Dems WAY too much to do anything but cleave to the fundies.
Kimmitt
Present company excepted, of course. :)
p.lukasiak
The process that brought us George W. Bush started almost immediately after the 1996 election….
obviously the religious wingnuts want to repeat the success of the corporate goons who ensured that Bush won the GOP nomination in 2000…
rondo
I’d say Kimmitt is right…this secular conservative (more libertarian, really) doesn’t really fear the religious right. I remember all the heartburn and angst about Ed Meese and the Moral Majority, and I bet you’d be lucky to find 3 people in 10 today who knew who they were. But since I’m more worried about radical Muslims killing Americans than I’m worried about whether stem cell research is approved, I’m willing to put up with their stupidity to have a President who’s willing to take the fight to the enemy without waiting for the UN to grant permission.
I don’t like Republicans, but I absolutely despise Democrats…
Sojourner
So you don’t mind your president lying the U.S. into a war that is creating more terrorists than it’s killing? And that makes you feel safer?
Interesting.
Kimmitt
President who’s willing to take the fight to the enemy without waiting for the UN to grant permission.
Okay, seriously — did Bill Clinton wait for UN “permission” to hit Iraq or the Sudan when he felt it was in the security interests of the United States? Did we not act in Kosovo with the sanction only of NATO, not the UN as a whole?
Don’t believe the hype; believe instead the history.
Kimmitt
But since I’m more worried about radical Muslims killing Americans than I’m worried about whether stem cell research is approved,
Even if I were to concede that the Democrats are likely to get twice as many Americans killed by radical Muslims as the Republicans have (which I don’t, because the Republicans have no goddamn clue what they’re doing):
Americans killed by radical Muslims over the past 5 years: ~5000
Americans killed by Alzheimer’s over the past year:
63,343
Americans killed by Parkinson’s over the past year:
17,898
Source: CDC.
Priorities.