Next weekend, the far-right-of-center Family Research Council will convene (what else?) a far right conference in Washington DC.  They certainly want both McCain and Palin to show up.  Here’s the rub: will these candidates want to risk showing up at the conference?  This was the conference which, in the past, has held workshops in which leaders told attendees to lie to local churches to obtain their mailing lists to be used for partisan purposes.  It was the conference which figured appalling presentations which encouraged hate speech against gay Americans and  supported torture of suspected terrorists.  Those speakers made moderate Christians long for the old days of Pat Robertson’s Christian Coalition gatherings in the l980s and l990s.