Evangelicals Upset

Joe Conason's latest article looks at how Evangelicals are taking Guilliani and Romney's success in the primary season so far. It is still far to early to anoint anybody king, but those two do trouble Evangelical Republicans.

The most significant voice raised against the notion of a Giuliani nomination belongs to James Dobson, president of Focus on the Family, which is now widely reckoned to be the nation’s largest religious-right organization. On May 17, Mr. Dobson declared that he could not support the candidacy of the former New York Mayor under any circumstances.

. . . Now this isn’t the first time that Mr. Dobson or Mr. Viguerie have issued angry warnings to the Republican establishment about dire consequences if the party departs from righteousness. Such jeremiads are always heard in the election-year cacophony, and are always dismissed as meaningless cant. Power reliably overcomes principle for these moral absolutists.

But next year might be different. For many of the true believers of the religious right, the nomination of either Mr. Giuliani or Mr. Romney would represent the ultimate humiliation. Should either of these events come to pass, then the Dobsons and the Vigueries and their followers at last will have to validate their ideological posturing with independent action. They will have to put up or shut up.

I've noted in the fast how quickly Big Business Conservatives got what they wanted out of the Bush administration (immediately), and how quickly Religious Conservatives got what they wanted out of the Bush Adminstration (Well, a few judges I guess, and . . . ). Maybe they will wake up to how their party looks at them.