NEWS AND OPINION:
Those who base their politics and lifestyles around traditional values, faith and founding principles are many in number, and have their eyes on the nation’s capital. It’s making liberal and progressive folk nervous, organizers say.
“The Left is shaking in their slippers about the Values Voters Summit,” says Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, which organized the event, which continues through Saturday in the nation’s capital with an extensive speaker’s roster that includes Sarah Palin, Sens. Rand Paul and Ted Cruz, Mike Huckabee, Rick Santorum and Glenn Beck - capped off with a 2016 presidential straw poll.
Liberals are spending “tens of thousands in advertising dollars to stop the event,” Mr. Perkins says, citing the Southern Poverty Law Center in particular. The legal organization and a coalition of civil rights groups are now calling on the Republican National Committee to “distance” itself from the summit, which they say promotes “repeated, groundless demonization of LGBT people — portraying them as sick, vile, incestuous, violent, perverted, and a danger to the nation.”
Mr. Perkins counters with some new opinion poll numbers.
“The Left is willing to fork over a lot of money to stifle speech they disagree with. Perhaps what bothers these groups even more than the Values Voter Summit, is the new Pew Research survey released this week showing a growing number of Americans want to see religious leaders take a stronger role in addressing social and political issues - a 6 point jump,” he continues.
“The share of Americans who say churches and other houses of worship should express their views on social and political issues is up 6 points since the 2010 midterm elections (from 43 percent to 49 percent),” the Pew Forum poll says.
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“The share who say there has been “too little” expression of religious faith and prayer from political leaders is up modestly over the same period (from 37 percent to 41 percent,” Mr. Perkins says. “And a growing minority of Americans (32 percent) think churches should endorse candidates for political office, though most continue to oppose such direct involvement by churches in electoral politics.”
The same survey reveals that evangelical Republicans, along with Catholics, are the likeliest voters to get to the polls in November - 79 percent will vote, compared to 71 percent for the rest of the nation. And about that straw poll.
“It’ll be an early look at where social conservatives stand in their pick for the Oval Office,” Mr. Perkins adds. C-SPAN will begin coverage of the summit at 8:50 a.m. ET on Friday.
NOSTALGIA FOR THE GOOD OLD GOP DAYS
There’s some nostalgia afoot for the “Contract With America” circulating among Republicans who remember that visceral policy document, penned by then House Whip Newt Gingrich and signed by 367 members of GOP lawmakers exactly 20 years ago on Saturday. The date was September 27, 1994 - in an era when the Republican Party spoke “loudly and proudly”, says Ripon Forum editor Lou Zickar.
The contract spelled out policy intentions to voters in clear, down-to-earth terms. It was so down-to-earth that the core organizers published the document in Reader’s Digest to make their point. It all worked. Many analysts credited the Contract with putting the GOP back in control of Congress. These days, the doctrines and proposals would have been tweeted out line by line, or given a splashy Facebook presence with many bells and whistles.
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In the end, though, it was authentic communication that resonated with voters, when Republicans “proclaimed not what they stood against, but what they stood for,” Mr. Zickar points out.
The aforementioned forum itself is devoted to the Contract With America this month, with observations from, among many, Haley Barbour - who says the document gave people “something to vote for” - and Indiana Gov. Mike Pence. It can be found at RiponSociety.Org.
But there were rumblings earlier this year. In June, a group of 45 Republican lawmakers called for the Party to come up with a new policy manifesto, as both the midterms and 2016 elections looms.
“I think it’s a strategic mistake for our party leadership not to come up with a document that has four or five action items. I’ve tried to allow those in leadership to do this. If they don’t move forward soon, there will be a rebellion among the rank and file,” Rep. Lindsey Graham predicted to Politico at the time.
HOLLYWOOD? JUST SAY NYET
Two major Russian film directors are calling for a ban on American movies in their nation until President Obama lifts sanctions on Russia for aggression against Ukraine in recent months. Director Yuri Kavi is disturbed by U.S. films that “demonize Russia and Russians”; Stanislav Govorukhin, who served as Russian president Vladimir Putin’s political campaign manager, agrees.
A boycott on Tinseltown could hurt a little: Russia is a $1.3 billion movie market with American fare accounting for 75 percent of the receipts, according to The Hollywood Reporter. But it is a tricky business.
“Hollywood movies create steady audience flow to theaters here, leading to more screens being opened in the country, which eventually helps Russian productions,” Moscow based media analyst Alexander Akopov told the U.S. industry publication.
“We understand that there is no way for Hollywood to stop portraying us as the bad guys. We just advise that Hollywood add some balance and introduce some good Russian characters into their stories too. Apart from being fair and politically correct, this approach will also help keep screens open for Hollywood in the world’s sixth largest theatrical market,” Mr. Akopov noted.
LOOKING FOR NUMBER THREE
Well this ought to please the Libertarians and the Greens - but give great pause to the U.S. Congress.
“A majority of U.S. adults, 58 percent, say a third U.S. political party is needed because the Republican and Democratic parties ’do such a poor job representing the American people,’” says Jeffrey Jones, a Gallup analyst.
But there’s some chafing going on among the parties. The pollster found that 46 percent of Republicans, 47 percent of Democrats and 71 percent of independents agree with the idea. The process still favors a two-party system, though.
“The U.S. political system makes it difficult for third parties to hold elected office given the Electoral College system of electing presidents and election of members of Congress from individual states and districts based on the candidate getting the most votes,” Mr. Jones says.
“Those whose ideology puts them to the left of the Democratic Party or the right of the Republican Party are better served trying to work within a major political party than establishing their own party,” he says, adding “It is unclear how many Americans would actually support a third party if it came to be. Americans’ preference for a third party may reflect their frustration with the way the Republican and Democratic parties are performing, as well as the idea that the system ought to be open to new parties, regardless of whether this is viable in practice.”
NOT LOOKING FOR NUMBER THREE
Coffeehouse-style conversation, a goateed moderator and group answers? Perhaps the updates on NBC’s “Meet the Press” are not playing well at the moment, though that could change. The 57-year-old public affairs program — the longest running broadcast show in history remains in third place in the Sunday morning talk derby, according to Nielsen numbers released Thursday.
ABC’s “This Week” is in first place, followed by CBS’ “Face the Nation”, “MTP” in third and “Fox News Sunday” at fourth.
The audience is still out there, though, and the race is relatively close. The viewers numbers for the shows range from 2.5 to just over 3 million people on average.
David Gregory, who left the NBC show almost four weeks ago, has already quietly resurfaced in public, moderating a recent bipartisan political summit in the nation’s capital that featured Jon Huntsman and others who insist that major political parties must get along, or imperil the nations.
“Political journalism — the narrative gets set, and it gets set early and built on. And things that fight the narrative get harder to report out, I think, often because of laziness in media,” Mr. Gregory told the audience.
POLL DU JOUR
• 70 percent of Americans say positive thinking can “change outcomes;” 71 percent of Republicans, 75 percent of Democrats and 67 percent of independents agree.
• 61 percent of Americans overall say they are optimists; 69 percent of Republicans, 68 percent of Democrats and 53 percent of independents agree.
• 61 percent overall consider themselves “successful;” 75 percent of Republicans, 61 percent of Democrats and 53 percent of independents agree.
• 19 percent overall say they are pessimists; 18 percent of Republicans, 18 percent of Democrats and 20 percent of independents agree.
• 15 percent overall say positive thinking does not lead to a change in outcome; 14 percent of Republicans, 13 percent of Democrats and 16 percent of independents agree.
Source: A YouGov poll of 998 U.S. adults conducted Sept. 18-19.
• Values and quibbles to jharper@washingtontimes.com.
• Jennifer Harper can be reached at jharper@washingtontimes.com.
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