Carpetbagger has a typically thorough and astute "literature review" up, summarizing the right's conniption fit over Mike Huckabee (link), but let me add a footnote: I think it shows just how phony this whole "conservative coalition" really is. The GOP establishment is perfectly willing to give away the store on throwaway issues (!) like abortion and school prayer. But when a genuine, true-blue, take-no-prisoners evangelical joins the race, their small intestines turn to water. I don't feel any special sympathy for the evangelical leadership who have played the logrolling game as cynically as anybody. But if I were a mainline working-stuff born-again, I'd be feeling used & abused right now, wondering who my real friends are.
Perhaps Tedious Explanatory Footnote: The establishment has been willing to give away the story on abortion and school prayer because they know neither will ever affect them personally--the pro-life movement is about denying abortions to poor women, not to the daughters of the elite, and you can perfectly well opt out of school prayer by sending your kid to the right kind of private school. Gay marriage is, I admit, a tougher nut to crack: the establishment knows that the establishment couldn't get off its dime without the tweendecks infrastructure of conservative gays. My guess is that they've been gambling on the proposition that the issue will pass; that we are pretty close to realizing that they're here, they're queer, and we might as well deal with it. I remember what my old girlfriend used to say about the Virgin Mary: oy, happens in the best Jewish families.
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