Wonder whether they could be _dis_engaged. They didn't use to be political and they didn't use to be Republican. Didn't Carter get about half the evangelical vote? Course he was one himself, but he was a tad different from the Falwell-Robertson crowd. But maybe that's cat under the bridge, bag out of the water. One point that Tom Frank makes very well, the economic interests of most eva/fundi voters are Democratic, insofar as the Dems are what we have by way of a party for the common person. They used to vote that way, or not much different from the electorate at large.
I don't know whether Frank's proposal for a crass appeal to naked class interest would move evas/fundis who care about abortion and homosexuality (though it might be worth a try), but sure the conflict suggests that there some basis for reaching a good chunk of these voters without compromising stuff that really matters to us or pandering to their pious prejudices.
I don't much care that our politicians feel obliged to mouth godspeak, Lincoln did (gloriously) and he was probably an atheist -- in order to protect Lincoln's political career and maybe their legal practice, his law partner, William Herdon, burned what was apparently a defense of freethinking that Lincoln gave him for review; and the founders were Deists, which is might-as-well be atheists (Franklin may have been a plain atheist; he was, at any rate a member of the Hellfire Club, along with Hume). That was a long time ago, true, but if the religion pols have to display is "civic," it's no more toxic than their other blatant disingenuities.
--- Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
>
> On Jul 11, 2007, at 5:32 PM, Chip Berlet wrote:
>
> > The Dems backsliding on reproductive rights and
> gay rights is too
> > creepy.
>
> Are you surprised? This is what happens when you try
> to "engage" the
> religious. There just aren't enough of the Pious
> Pinkos to matter -
> the real gravitational pull of that strategy is to
> the right.
>
> Doug
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