And still, they come.
Republican genuflecting to the worst of the far right at the supposed "Values Voter" Summit continues year after year, despite the hosting Family Research Council being
a rat's nest of hatemongers.
The annual Values Voter Summit opens Friday in Washington with speeches from several potential presidential candidates, including Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal. The speaking program features ambitious Republicans with positions on social issues across the spectrum — from the libertarian-leaning Paul, who favors less emphasis on abortion and gay marriage, to Huckabee, a former Southern Baptist pastor whose conservative social values define his brand.
The Values Voter Summit is when prominent Republicans go pay homage to the nastiest elements of the far right. The event is hosted by the SPLC-listed hate group Family Research Council, a group that earned designation as
a hate group by the SPLC for their flagrant anti-LGBT attacks and misinformation, and hosted specifically by Tony Perkins, an anti-LGBT
conspiracy theorist of the highest order. Fellow SPLC-listed hate group
American Family Association is well represented; their most prominent voices,
Bryan Fischer and
Tim Wildmon, are known for declarations that homosexuality should be criminalized and that gay people
were responsible for the Holocaust. And yet the supposed leading lights of the Republican party cannot wait to be seen with and make speeches catering to that crowd, yet again, as they do every year.
So what are we to make of that? The entire point of these groups' existence is to knowingly spread malevolent disinformation about other Americans while demanding that America place itself under stricter religious laws, and we've got "leaders" like the fauxest faux-libertarian Rand Paul not merely paying their respects to those efforts, but happily stoking their paranoias?
Paul's remarks Friday will include a strong emphasis on Christian persecution abroad, according to excerpts obtained by The Associated Press. Advisers say he will reiterate calls to restrict foreign aid to countries that don't protect religious freedom — citing Pakistan and Sudan — in a speech that will describe an America as being in "a spiritual crisis."
"Our moral compass is wavering," Paul says in his prepared remarks. "What America needs is not just another politician or more promises. What America needs is a revival."
The one good thing about the Values Voter Summit is that it is a regular producer of some of the year's least-polished, most willfully nasty quotes and rhetoric. Ambitious national Republicans come to cater to a crowd that demands far-right rhetoric, and presidentially minded politicians who feel they need the support of the hate groups come to deliver it. You either win the crowd and come home to fresh new videotaped baggage in the form of all those things you just said, or you try to play it safe and earn the grumpy disapproval of a far-right crowd now convinced you aren't sufficiently on their side after all.
In either case, mere attendance at the event strips supposed political moderates of a year's worth of their pretended-at moderation. Like speaking to a pro-cockfighting or pro-Confederacy group, this thing speaks for itself.