re: #195 freetoken

I read this with some interest this morning. It also mentions the Thanksgiving Family Forum:

How Iowa’s Social Conservatives Lost Their Influence

This weekend’s “Thanksgiving Family Forum” at a Des Moines megachurch probably seemed like a great idea to Iowa social conservatives when it was first developed. You’d have the presidential candidates arrayed around a “Thanksgiving table,” obediently waiting for a symbolic serving of activist support. In the pews would be thousands of stolid Iowans of the sort most likely to show up at the January 3 caucuses. Wielding the microphone would be focus-group king Frank Luntz, probing the worldviews of the candidates to determine their fidelity to a teavangelical, big-God, small-government creed. And at the head of the table, in spirit at least, would be Iowa right-wing kingmaker Bob Vander Plaats, ready to crown one of the candidates as the Mike Huckabee of 2012.

It could still play out that way, of course, but the political context surrounding the Thanksgiving Family Forum, cosponsored by Vander Plaats’ FAMiLY Leader group, the National Organization for Marriage, and Focus on the Family’s CitizenLink affiliate, suggests the effort to unite Christian Right voters around a single candidate in Iowa could prove too little and too late. […]

I hope they’re right about waning influence.