Last night in Florida, USian fundies held their "Values Voters Debate" with all the preznitial candidates except the ones that have any chance of winning -- Giuliani, McCain, Romney and Thompson didn't show. I watched some of this little shindig online and for the most part it just confirmed my long-standing opinion that these people are all about as crazy as shithouse rats. There were prayers aplenty, quotes from the bible, and invocations of the Lord's name, but it wasn't all fetuses and family values. Ron Paul provided some interesting moments -- I actually found myself agreeing with some of what he had to say, especially the parts about "virtue being up to the individual to decide" and how "government intervention in such things was tyranny". Tyranny! Yeah, that impressed me, although it didn't seem to fly too well with the clearly authoritarian audience who'd like nothing better than to intervene, poke and prod into every aspect of peoples' lives, especially their sex lives, and impose their values down the throats and up the asses of the nation.
As for the rest of the candidates - wow, what a collection of mixed nuts, unhinged lunatics and Talibangelists (and even Paul, the sanest among them, had lapses in lucidity). Lots of talk about Prayer! and God! and the Family! and Marriage! and Abstinence!. The Values Voters weren't impressed that Rudy et al declined their invitation, and they symbolically addressed questions to their empty podiums, I guess to rub in the message even harder: "You snubbed us! And you'll pay for that snub in '08!" Oh my goodness, what an overblown image they have of their own importance -- none of these candidates will even win the nomination, so come election day, the Values Voters will be value voting for the GOP candidate even if it's a rock.
But it's an interesting idea, getting together a big group of one-issue voters and grilling all the candidates. I'm thinking we could do something like this before our next election, maybe call it the "Value Village Voters" debate.
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