Who speaks for conservatives?
On local talk radio last Friday, Ian Punnett was claiming that several of the largest leading conservative organizations had made public statements against the announcement of Mary Cheney and Heather Poe’s pregnancy. As an avid reader of conservative opinion, I was confused by his statement. Other than one or two AP reports, I haven’t seen any coverage of this story. Is there a religion angle? Well, yeah there is. The few organizations that have made comments are religious organizations and not merely conservative organizations: Concerned Women for America, Focus on the Family. To me, it’s a leap to take a press release from a religious group and call it a statement by a political group, although that leap is made all the time. I realize there is a relationship between politics and religion and it’s artificial to keep the two separate, but it is still important to know what parts of an issue are religious and what parts are political.
So on Friday, I searched out my usual conservative and religious blogs and websites this morning and couldn’t find any mention of the issue. This story came out last Wednesday, I think.
Technorati- only being mentioned by liberal bloggers
Minnesota Organization of Bloggers - not one word
Confessional Lutheran Blogosphere (using my own feed aggregator) - not one word
Get Religion blog- not one word
Christianity Today - not one word
Townhall - nothing
Instapundit - one brief mention in the form of a link to a small blog
Pajamas Media - one mention of the AP news report; nobody commented on the post
World Magazine - no mention
It’s my opinion that the evangelical movement that took control of conservatism in the Reagan era are out of step with today’s conservatives and are issuing condemnations not supported by most conservatives. It is also those same leaders who cannot offer a valid explanation for why conservatives did not vote for their usual candidates this year. Although we sometimes have issues in common, Focus on the Family and Concerned Women for America don’t speak for me as a conservative.
Of course, another explanation could be that media and others are refraining from commenting out of respect for the Vice President. What is the likelihood of that, though???
I think Get Religion did mention this story: http://www.getreligion.org/?p=2091
Yes, they did later on in the day. Thanks for reminding me to add that as an update.
I’d like to think I had some influence, since I did shoot an email to my contact there. However, it is possible that they were already aware of the matter.