The next presidential election is still more than twenty months away, but the Right is not wasting any time in preparing to mobilize its activists to turn out in force.
For instance, the Family Research Council just announced that it will be hosting its second “Values Voter Summit” in October, which they declare is “guaranteed to change the debate in 2008.”
It appears as if Rick Scarborough and Alan Keyes are gearing up for the election as well, announcing their new “Seventy Weeks to Renew America” project:
On July 4, 2007, Dr. Alan Keyes and I will launch a major effort to enlist 100,000 Values Voters, 10,000 key leaders, 5,000 Patriot Pastors and 5,000 women - who will pray for national renewal and who will vote their Christian values on election day 2008.
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There are 70 weeks from July 4, 2007 until the last Wednesday before the national elections of 2008. We will be in an average of one city each week for those 70 weeks, calling the church to be the church.
Normally, the fact that the Right is this motivated this early would be a good sign for GOP presidential hopefuls, but not this time around since these activists are not particularly enthused about any of the current frontrunners. As Rick Scarborough wrote recently (emphasis in original):
Can the Republican Party continue to claim to be the Party of Values in light of the current crop of front-runners? I think not.
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We must pray and work toward securing a candidate that we can not only vote for, but get excited about when we go to the polls.
And we should be ready to go outside the Republican Party if it refuses to give us such a candidate. Christians must always remember that we are followers of Christ, not pawns of a party which often wants to dance with us before the election but then ditches us right after the final vote count.
The Right is firmly convinced that they lost the last election because Republicans were not committed enough to pushing their agenda - despite the fact that it is completely untrue – and doing all they can to ensure that it doesn’t happen again, even going so far as to threaten to bolt the party.
It’ll never happen, of course, but it will undoubtedly throw GOP candidates’ frantic courtship of the Right into overdrive.
