Get The Flock Out

As expected, the dearth of reliable wingnut puppets has the evangelicals huddling strategically, despite the best kneepad-laden feints of Saints Johnny and Rudy. I guess we can take it as a given that they also don't yet trust the inevitability viability of an Ave Maria Domino's Buttery Crust Brownback preznitency. It remains unclear whether that's more of a commentary on Brownback himself, or the American public starting to get wise to their grift, which just by the law of averages has to happen eventually, you'd think.

A group of influential Christian conservatives and their allies emerged from a private meeting at a Florida resort this month dissatisfied with the Republican presidential field and uncertain where to turn.

The event was a meeting of the Council for National Policy, a secretive club whose few hundred members include James Dobson of Focus on the Family, the Rev. Jerry Falwell of Liberty University and Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform. Although little known outside the conservative movement, the council has become a pivotal stop for Republican presidential primary hopefuls, including George W. Bush in 1999, when he was governor or Texas.

I always love how these euphemistically-titled clubs of empowered assholes pronounce themselves to be operating in the national interest -- and then meet and plan secretly. There's not even the pretense of actual debate, just a mission of pushing an agenda, whether we like it or not. I figure if God had wanted me to let a dickhead like James Dobson push me around, he'd have made me one of the unquestioning plankton clogging his stadium-churches. I hear there's a lot of tail to be had if a guy can pull off a seersucker suit, so there's that.

"Right now there is still a vacuum among conservative Republicans," said Gary Bauer, a Christian conservative who was a Republican primary candidate in 2000. Conservatives, he said, "want a more provable conservative who also is demonstrating that they can put together the resources necessary to prevail." He declined to comment on the Amelia Island meeting.

A spokesman for Brownback said he would not comment on the senator's presentation to the council, citing its rules about strict confidentiality. Several others who attended his speech said he received heavy applause for his emphasis on restricting abortion and amending the Constitution to ban same-sex marriage.

But others objected to his support for a temporary worker program for immigrants, and several faulted Brownback for touching only briefly on the threat of Islamic terrorists, an increasingly central focus of the council and many social conservative groups since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Norquist, a member of the Council for National Policy, said he remained open to any of the three candidates who spoke to the group or, for that matter, to Romney. He argued that with the right promises, any of the four could redeem themselves in the eyes of the conservative movement despite their past records, just as some high school students take abstinence pledges after having had sex.

"It's called secondary virginity," he said. "It is a big movement in high school and also available for politicians."

I agree with Grover on the benefits of secondary virginity. It gives them all another chance to go fuck themselves.