Actually, several of the articles I posted or linked to in my last few posts were specifically about the power of White Christian evangelicals in the Republican Party; or their propensity to vote their conservative religious beliefs over their economic self-interest.
The issue is not how many elected officials are conservative White Christian evangelicals--the issue is whether or not the Republican Party and the Bush administration believe the Christian Right is a significant factor in turning out Republican voters, and thus needs to be given a political payoff in terms of legislation, regulations, and policies.
Since conservative White Christian evangelicals have in fact been given political payoffs in terms of legislation, regulations, and policies; then this is evidence of the political power of the Christian Right--or at least evidence that the Republican Party and the Bush administration believe the Christian Right has political power.
Chip "I am over my limit for today" Berlet Senior Analyst Political Research Associates Webmaster http://www.publiceye.org
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-----Original Message----- From: srobin21 at comcast.net [mailto:srobin21 at comcast.net] Sent: Thursday, September 16, 2004 5:13 PM To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org Subject: RE: [lbo-talk] Re: Powerless religious right?
Chip The articles below show the Republicans trying to mobilize Chrisitan Evangelical voters to the polls. I do not think those articles show "influence' (Certainly the DLC wants to mobilize the Democrat core constituencies to the poles on election day, but that by no means that labor or people of color have influence within the Democrat Party ruling circles). A more accurate guage would be the number of elected and cabinet officials, and secondarily, the number of policy makers, that have arisen from the religious right. I can think of one cabinet official - Ashcroft- and I am sure there are senators and congresspeople. It would be interesting to know whether their numbers are increasing or decreasing... Steve