World Net Daily puts a literary spin on the failure of the “Values Voter Debate”:
With “invisible” candidates who failed to show up getting grilled with questions, hundreds of empty seats, not a single mainstream television network on hand, and the name of God invoked countless times, the “unseen world” clearly dominated last night’s Republican presidential debate in South Florida.
High-profile contenders Rudy Giuliani, John McCain, Mitt Romney and Fred Thompson all chose not to participate, though each had an empty podium with his name displayed on stage to emphasize his absence.
You might have thought all that nothingness would drive the organizers to atheism — certainly it doesn’t say much for their political clout.
The second tier was out in force, at any rate, and Mike Huckabee led the pack, winning the straw poll. Huckabee, it might seem, has nothing to lose by pandering to a religious right that has been feeling neglected lately, though if he were somehow to catapult himself to the nomination, such associations might come back to damage his image as a new and different kind of evangelical politician.
If you missed the debate, or if your streaming video link didn’t work (mine didn’t), you can find the questions here. One is by a gentleman from an organization called “Americans for Truth About Homosexuality.” Sadly, my gay friends and family members inform me that the truth about homosexuality is not nearly as exciting as you might think. But I digress. Video clips will be up at the VVD website, I presume, so you can watch the parade of moral warriors demanding, on behalf of invisible constituencies, just what the invisible candidates plan to do about the imaginary problems confronting their made-up version of America.
4 Responses to “Being and Nothingness in Fort Lauderdale”
I hope that Huckabee wins the nomination, but I hope that no one will know who will win the nomination before the convention. That would ensure that the convention will be more suspenseful and exciting, causing more people to watch and listen to the great republican ideas.
I love the sentiment, “it doesn’t count if it’s not covered by the mainstream media”, coming from an internet blog. Hipocrisy anyone?
[...] Huckabee, Rudy Giuliani, Sam Brownback, John McCain, Tom Tancredo, Duncan Hunter, Mitt source: Being and Nothingness in Fort Lauderdale, The Rights [...]
Something to say?
Huckabee didn’t just win the straw poll, he got 64%. If he becomes the values candidate, that fractures the base even more and makes it even more possible to have a brokered convention.
Left by David Dayen
September 18, 2007 at 7:27pm