Next Saturday, most of the leading Republican presidential contenders will be gathering in Iowa for a “Thanksgiving Family Forum” that will be moderated by Republican pollster Frank Luntz. The event is being sponsored by The Family Leader, the National Organization for Marriage, and CitizenLink, the political arm of Focus on the Family.
Since CitizenLink is one of the co-sponsors, Executive Director Tom Minnery will be assisting Luntz in asking questions of the candidates and explains that the purpose of this forum is different from all of the debates that have been held so far:
We’re well into the presidential primary election debate season and I suspect that the candidates are as frustrated as those of us in the viewing audience, with “gotcha” questions, testy squabbles, and your-national-defense-strategy-in-30-seconds-please time limits.
Those of us in the social conservative realm have noticed something else-the virtual absence of intelligent and probing questions on the enduring values of faith, family, and society’s responsibilities to its children, both born and preborn. These are the messier and many times controversial issues that derive from the soul and for which sound bites simply won’t do.
In a recent CitizenLink video, Minnery explained that while Mitt Romney will reportedly not be attending, all of the others will, including Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul, and Herman Cain.
But when it comes to Cain, Minnery says that he will not be asked about the myriad of sexual harassment/assault allegations that he is facing:
Stuart Shepard: One of people who will be there has been in the headlines a lot over the past week and a half, and that is businessman Herman Cain. Are you going to hit him with tough questions about what has been in the headlines?
Minnery: Well, that itself is a tough question but I’m glad you asked it because, actually, no. Every person in every press outlet that I’m aware of wants to get to Herman Cain on these questions about sexual harassment from years ago and they’re having ample opportunity to do that. There are issues that we want to know that don’t happen to deal with that and we’re not going to take up our time dealing with that issue because, as I say, everybody else is doing that. That’s the one thing about Herman Cain that’s in the press daily now.
So there you go: the Religious Right will be hosting the forum designed to find out where the Republicans candidates stand on issues regarding the “enduring values of faith [and] family,” but they are “not going to take up our time” asking the frontrunner about the multiple allegations of sexual harassment he is facing.
