'Values Voter Bus Tour' to Travel Across America
Conservative lobbying group Family Research Council Action announced Saturday the launch of a "Values Voter Bus Tour" that will travel the country between now and the Nov. 12, 2012 election, carrying the message of faith, family and freedom.
The announcement came on day two of the three-day Values Voter Summit in Washington, D.C., which is hosting discussions about social issues such as marriage, abortion and religious freedom, and featuring speeches by GOP presidential candidates.
"Over the next year, the Values Voter Bus will travel the country registering voters and speaking to the views held by millions of American voters who are deeply concerned about issues impacting the family and the broader culture," Tony Perkins, president of FRC Action, said in a statement.
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The nationwide bus tour follows a "Values Bus" tour across Iowa this summer to elevate key issues impacting the family and broader culture in advance of the Ames Straw Poll. Earlier, a "Judge Bus" tour saw the ouster of three Iowa Supreme Court justices who ruled in 2009 that a legislative ban on gay marriage was a violation of the state's equal protection clause. Both the tours were organized by FRC Action and its allies.
After the ongoing Values Voter Summit, the "Values Voter Bus" will depart for events next week in New Hampshire and will be joined by presidential candidates Rick Santorum and Michele Bachmann. The tour will then proceed to the swing states of Ohio and Missouri, and over the next year it will travel through "other battleground states, including North Carolina and Minnesota which have marriage amendments on their ballots."
"We have invited the presidential candidates to join the 'Values Voter Bus Tour' so that they can speak directly to values voters about their plans to protect marriage, safeguard religious liberty, protect the rights of the unborn and restore fiscal sanity," Perkins said.
Perkins added that he agreed with President Barack Obama who recently said that this election "is a contest of values." The 2012 election is indeed about values, he said. But "President Obama's values are clear – marriage, life and the Constitution mean little to him in the pursuit of his radical agenda."
He said values voters may have their favorite primary candidates but "they are united in the belief that President Obama must be a one-term President." Obama, he stressed, must be replaced "if we hope to make America militarily strong and secure, economically prosperous and free, and socially healthy and virtuous."
FRC Action, a legislative action arm of Family Research Council, was founded in 1992 to educate the general public and cultural leaders about traditional American values and to promote the philosophy of the Founding Fathers concerning the nature of ordered liberty, according to the group's website.
