As Karl Rove would have pointed out, having 100% of 25% of the electorate won't win elections. All opinion polls on all issues since 2006 show the general public completely alienated from the fanatical Bush voting block. Every poll question shows Bush policies garnering only 25% approval at best, so the block that Rove cultivated so carefully has been carved down to its minimal core and is no longer significant enough to bother with. IT'S MORE IMPORTANT FOR DEMOCRATS TO KEEP MOST OF THE LEFT AND CENTER THAN IT IS FOR THEM TO WIN ANY OF THE RELIGIOUS RIGHT.

And the idea that any of the evangelical fanatics care about the environment or gay rights or any other truly Christian values is rubbish. Political evangelicalism has always been about rural conservatives attempting to seize power over the larger urban society by using religion as a tool of control over the rural electorate. There is no sincere devotion to Christian values among these people, religion is a show to mask the underlying value of hating the liberal values of the large society which makes them feel inferior. We are not fooled, by them or by you and your delusional attachment to them...

So why did you clue them in. We now need both Democrats and Independents to make policy for the United States. The Republicans have taken us down the slippery road to bankruptcy. Every area of our society except for the rich are suffering. The Democrats and Independents are the only ones to give us the help we need. These so called Evangelical Christians remind me of the Sanhedrin of the time of Jesus. They just want for themselves and don't really care about anyone else. Billions for the war and not enough for our children. As Colbert said, (to paraphrase) "the Republicans are doing our children a favor in not giving them health care. This way they won't expect it when they become adults." What a sad commentary on our country.

Does anyone really believe that Republic politicians truly believe the religious crap they wear so easily on their sleeves? C'mon, we're all smarter than that!

The R's alignment with the religious right started in earnest with Reagan - our first and only divorced president (who was stupffing Nancy while he was still married to Jane) whose family values included alienation from his children and throwing familes off welfare, and a Xian who never attended church but supposedly saw god everywhere. This "godly" man won a landslide victory over a president who made it a point to teach Sunday School every week.

No, the sorry truth is that the Republic Party has always been the party of the haves, taking advantage of and keeping down the rabble to the best of their abilities. They welcomed with open arms the bigots who fled the Democratic Party after LBJ signed the Civil Rights bill, and they abandoned the non-religious conservatism of Barry Goldwater and have won on their Southern Strategy for years.

The religious in this country are simply the latest dupes of a Party that will say anything to get elected, as long as they are allowed to embrace intolerance along the way. As the power of the Xian Right diminishes in this country, it will be the REPUBLICS, not the Democrats, who will openly embrace freethinking and the ideas of the enlightenment and run on them as a platform. They'll toss away the religious like yesterday's news, equating the religious in America with the religious nuts in the Middle East and by adopting a more-European attitude to politics and morality.

And they'll make a cogent case of it, because they will find a way to stress self-centered-ness in their messaging. True, they won't have the easy cover of religion that has been afforded them over the past 25 years, but as they were never really about religion to begin with, they be able to turn on a dime when the time comes.

My prediction: they'll call it "The New Goldwaterism."

Meanwhile, the Dems will be stuck with the "party of the religious" label for a while, having come late to the religious party and having embraced religion only as a blatant and pandering political strategy. Hell, the pandering fueling their embrace of on-the-sleeve religion-ism is already showing, and this is only the FIRST election in which they've tried it. Imagine how bad it will be in 2112 when the Rs are well down the road to "secularism ain't so bad after all" while the Dems are stuck with a platform built of bronze (bronze-aged thought, that is).

Remember, you heard it here first.