Values Voter Summit

U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann has been urging people since at least July to “melt the phone lines” of the politically powerful on health care reform. Now the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and Gov. Tim Pawlenty are taking her advice to heart.

Salon’s Mike Madden notes that the Values Voters Summit, which features Minnesota’s conservative heavyweights Rep. Michele Bachmann and Gov. Tim Pawlenty, is being held on Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year and a religiously prescribed day of rest.
“Does the [Family Research Council] think Jews don’t have values? Or was this just the only fall weekend [...]

Rep. Michele Bachmann will join Gov. Tim Pawlenty at the biggest religious right event of the year. The Sept. 18 Values Voter Summit, hosted by Focus on the Family and several other groups opposed to gay rights, generates controversy just about every year it’s held. In 2006, a speaker decried “faggots” and a gay-rights movement [...]

The Family Research Council has announced that Gov. Tim Pawlenty will be a featured speaker at September’s Values Voter Summit. The annual conference hosts leaders from the anti-gay rights and anti-abortion movements, and last year was host to the controversial “Obama Waffles” flap.
Other confirmed speakers this year include American Family Association president Don Wildmon, Eagle [...]

Every year hundreds of religious right leaders gather in Washington, D.C., to talk values and voting. At this year’s Values Voter Summit those values included some whoppers: a racist caricature of Sen. Barack Obama, fear-mongering by Gary Bauer, a campaign to save California from evil “homosexuals,” and the constant hyperbole of U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann.

The Values Voters Summit features a “who’s who” of the religious right, but who wasn’t there? Republican presidential nominee John McCain and his running mate, Sarah Palin, an absence that organizers weren’t very happy about.