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"Then they'll be choosing to be a minority party again."

It appears they have already chosen that, but do not believe it.

The steps to the edge of the cliff and over it:

(1) Arlen Specter throws cold water on the pro-life movement the day after Election Day...and is elevated to the Senate Judiciary Chair anyway with the party's "Trust me".

(2) President, Governor, Congress and Republican legislature all clearly express the moral outrage at the evil being done by a (Republican) judge to Terry Schiavo. They posture, issue threats and subpoenas, but when the Judiciary digs in and asserts that it WILL kill the woman, the Republicans go silent, back down, wash their hands like Pontius Pilate, and say "We did everything we could do. Trust us. Blame the Judges."

(3) In the same week, several Republican Senators, including Presidential wannabee John McCain, say they will not support the so-called "Nuclear Option" to end the filibuster of judges. In other words, the "Trust me" chit given in (1), above, was repaid with a "F*** You" when the other shoe dropped.

The step over the cliff is now out of Republican hands. It will come in two parts:
(a) Terri will die, and the pro-lifers will never forgive the Bushes or the Republicans for cowardice in the face of evil, and
(b) the Nuclear Option will not be passed, so the judiciary will not be conservative.

And the denoument is that in 2006 and 2008, 2010 and thereafter, the Christian pro-lifers stay home by the millions. Their leaders, the committed partisan ones, will not be able to overcome their cynicism and sense of having been used and fought to give power to worldly, duplicitous men.

If the Christians leave, absolutely nothing will bring them back for a generation. They are for the most part completely sincere, committed, single-issue moralists. Lie to them and betray them, and they see it in Biblical terms. The Bushes as Pilate, the Republicans as Judas and the like. They do not calculate advantages.

Most are rather poor, and will be least affected by the reversal of the Republican economic agenda entailed by the new Democrat majority. Income taxes, capital gains taxes, payroll taxes, dividends taxes and estate taxes will all go back up. Social Security will be "saved" by tax increases. The economy will suffer, of course, but Christians will suffer along with it. Mammon is secondary to most of the committed pro-lifers.

Lose the pro-lifers, and the "Roe Effect" that folks like James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal write about giving the Republican Right a demographic advantage for the foreseeable future evaporates. The Roe Effect only gives the Republicans an advantage if the reproducing Christian pro-lifers believe that the Republicans are really pro-life. And right now we really do not.
We believe that the Republicans have talked a good game and roped us along like dopes for thirty years when they knew, and we knew, that they really couldn't change Roe or do anything about the Judiciary.

But now they can, and this past week they needed to.
They refused to use their power for life in the case of Terri, and indicated that they will not even use it in the Senate to override the minority Democrat filibuster and get in a pro-life Judiciary.

This reveals them as liars, and us a pawns.
We cannot unmake them liars, although they could reverse our sense of betrayal by moving now, even in this late hour, to save Terri and to pass the Nuclear Option.
They don't want to.

We certainly will unmake ourselves as pawns.

The Republican Party can be saved, still, if it will yield.
All it has to do is to do what it said it was going to do for thirty years. Install the judges, and defend life by saving Terri.

That's not hard, unless you really don't care about abortion except as an issue to keep the braying Christian dopes in ranks to keep your majority and agenda alive.

Too late. The dopes are awake and angry and heartbroken.
Characteristically, the Republican leadership is too arrogantly confident of its ability to manage events to take the observations of folks like me seriously.

We are, still, trying to SAVE you guys by telling you in simple terms what we NEED you to do:
(1) Save Terri like you said you would, and
(2) Pass the Nuclear Option and get the pro-life judges up there.

That's it.
That's all.
I read people bellyaching about how the Christians have "hijacked" the Republican party.

BS!

We have had one single issue of importance: abortion, for thirty years. It is not "hijacking" the party to make it overtly and explicitly clear that to get our votes you have to use your power to outlaw abortion. That is the deal, always was. To do that, it means changing the judiciary, and where necessary, facing down the judiciary where it overreaches in a new effort to attack life. The Schiavo case is emblematic of that, and required action.

What we got were words and words and words, as before, but no action.
What you are going to get for that is action.
We leave. The party divides and falls, and you get your taxes hiked back up again.

It is brutally simple: to keep your taxes low, support life. That's not being hijacked, that was always the deal.

We are not going to renegotiate the deal, and it shouldn't be a Mexican standoff here, because you AGREED TO THE DEAL for the past 30 years. Now it is time for you to PERFORM, and you don't want to. That's a betrayal. The Christians are not going to trust you again if you don't change you mind real quick.

Pass the Nuclear Option and save Terri. Then nominate conservative judges who will overturn Roe. That's the deal. Always was. Honor it and keep the majority.
Dishonor it and lose the Christians and the majority.

Between here and there, what Christians can do is send back their fundraising letters with a simple note: "I will send you my annual check when you've passed the Nuclear Option. Thank you."