UPDATE (9:42 PM, February 27, 2010): This post concerns Richard Viguerie and his opinion of the Mount Vernon Statement, meaning that my catch-all update from a few days ago applies to it. The original post is as follows:
Recognizing how convenient it must seem that my previous post placed so much weight on Richard Viguerie's alleged support of the Mount Vernon Statement, I preface the comments below by offering you my most sincere and solemn promise: I had no idea that Richard Viguerie is, in fact, against it. I would never have guessed that what appeared to be the Mount Vernon Statement website would have claimed that he is a supporter of it unless he were actually a supporter of it. (I assume that the website will soon be changed, if it is, in fact, the Mount Vernon Statement website, so here is a cached version.)
Assuming that this report from the Washington Times is accurate, Viguerie said of the Mount Vernon Statement, "If the people in the leadership of the conservative movement are going to put out pablum like this, the tea party people are going to make them seem irrelevant. And the tea party people are going to march to the forefront." He also described the Mount Vernon Statement as "embarassing."
Before I write anything more about that, I want to pre-empt another potential error on my part by acknowledging it and addressing it in advance. After reading the Washington Times article, I began to wonder whether http://themountvernonstatement.com/ even has any connection to the creators of the Mount Vernon Statement. As I investigated, I learned that a http://mountvernonstatement.com/ also exists, pointing to a page that is blank, aside from a message in red text, "Conserving even the 'The,'" and an instruction to guide inquiries to info@mountvernonstatement.com. I directed an inquiry to that address asking, "What is this?" We'll just have to wait and see whether I get a response. The fact that a potential alternate address is in use gives a little credibility to the possiblity that the other address is not legitimate.
As for that http://themountvernonstatement.com/ site itself, I believe that it is legitimate, but I am less certain of this than I was about twelve hours ago. First, I am surprised that it is coded in the way that it is. (That is my weakest reason for questioning its validity.) Second, I was able to find very few links to it, even from articles referencing the Mount Vernon Statement itself and even from sources that I would have expected to have posted links. Third, the web site's claim that Richard Viguerie is a proponent of the Mount Vernon Statement is a surprisingly large error to find on a website connected with 80 people of such stature.
To confirm that http://themountvernonstatement.com/ actually is the official website for the Mount Vernon Statement (and that it was not created by someone as a prank), I "Googled" the contact information at the bottom of the page, which eventually led me to Twitter accounts apparently belonging to the contact people named on the site. One of them points to http://themountvernonstatement.com/ as the true, official site for the Mount Vernon Statement. My searches also indicate that people by those names exist, at least, and work for a PR company that evidently does a lot of work for conservative organizations. For privacy reasons, I will not re-post all of this information here (even though it's just ordinary internet information that Google searches quickly returned). I will offer my opinion, however, that unless pranksters created Twitter accounts in the names of these two conservatives and dispensed conservative content for months (at least) in advance in order to credibly use the identity of one of the two conservatives to link to a fake website for a document whose existence no prankster could have foreseen, then http://themountvernonstatement.com/ probably is the real website for the Mount Vernon Statement. (The only other explanation is that a couple of people who speak for conservative organizations for a living created a fraudulent website for a document created by 80 prominent movement conservatives and then placed their names and contact information on it. I do not consider that to be very likely, either.)
So anyway, the plot thickens. Considering the advantages that the "Committee of 80" will have in promoting the Mount Vernon Statement, I still hope that the document to be revealed on Wednesday will be, as intended, a proper sequel to the Sharon Statement.
The fact that it (reportedly -- a word that I will need to use more often, from now on) does not have Richard Viguerie's confidence, however, worries me a little.
But if it does not work out, the Twelve Points will be ready to go.
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