It's been on C-SPAN and C-SPAN2 today, and it's pretty much being covered wire-to-wire on these channels.  If you can't get it on TV, the cspan.org website is streaming it.

I'm afraid it's a little like a train wreck -- very hard to look away.  I've watched most of it this afternoon and this evening.  

Quick comments:

Debate between Jim Wallis and Richard Land.  Only caught half of it.  Seemed to be pretty tame, debating the merits of fighting poverty as a pro-life issue.  Wallis did get booed for emphasizing Global Warming.  Nice.  

Rick Santorum -- laid into Hillary Clinton his whole speech.  Recounted his debate over partial birth abortion with Hillary Clinton.  Really tried to stick it to her.

Newt Gingrich -- claimed that the values of the audience are those of 80%-90% of the American population (i.e. if only those darned Washington lot would get out of the way, they would  naturally be in the majority).  I have rarely seen such shameless twisting the meaning of statistics and poll numbers in one session.  It's not surpising these people are so out of touch.

Ben Stein -- previewed his "Expelled" movie and spoke about how the free speech of Christians is being squashed.  Plenty of alarmist (and baseless) rhetoric about censorship of scientific ideas.  From the preview shown, the movie is going to be full of this sort of nonsense.

Ron Paul -- usual stuff, nothing very exciting.

Mitt Romney -- he's "always been pro-life".  Really, he said that.  Other than that - pander, tough on crime, pander, abortion, pander, family, pander, marriage, pander.  You get the picture.  Slick and unconvincing as ever.  (Someone is spreading a rumor that his supporters are attempting to "stuff" the straw poll at the event).  Chose intro music that sounded like the choirs of the heavenly hosts!

Phyllis Schlafley (sp?): Seemingly not impressed by *any*of the Republican candidates yet.  None of their commitments go far enough on judges, immigration, abortion, marriage, etc. etc.  

Missed Thompson, but one commenter is saw was that he was quite stilted.  Supporters seemed happy though (of course).

Gary Bauer -- hyping up the Islamic threat, and the atheist threat.  Now accusing the Dems of not supporting our troops -- MoveOn.org etc. (pander, pander).   Now just ganging on about judges as usual.  Oops - lost the connection.

Another speaker (I forgot his name) warned that the Democrats are going to get the FCC to make talk radio stations to commit to certain standards in their broadcasting (a kind of back door Fairness Doctrine, he says).

There was a conservative (down the line) black pastor who also spoke who said that he was still a registered Democrat so that when people thought they could dismiss him because he was a Republican he could tell them that they were mistaken.  Huh?  He doesn't share any of the Democratic views. Sort of dishonest,  no?

by tacitus on Fri Oct 19, 2007 at 09:12:18 PM EST

Having watched and heard about this for a few months, I have realized that, although we have hundreds, if not thousands, of supposedly 'value voter leaders', they cannot find a moral or valued candidate to support uniformly.  Apparently, not from their own ranks, and not from outside.  And that - to me - seems to say an awful lot.  Is there not a moral candidate within the Christian right?  

by Brainbelle on Sun Oct 21, 2007 at 04:23:09 PM EST

I also attended the Values Voter Summit. I wrote a few comments here: http://schmitzblitz.wordpress.com/2007/10/23/my-weekend-with-the- christianists/

by efs5r on Tue Oct 23, 2007 at 08:53:05 PM EST