"This whole Terri Schivio case maybe the breaking point. The religious people are getting fed up, and the power structure is just praying that she dies soon so they can go back to normal."
It is the breaking point.
First, the Bush boys both came up spineless. No matter how many times they say they "have done all they can do", and "are powerless", and no matter how many times their supporters echo that, it is false. It's a lie, and the religious pro-lifers know it is a lie. They could intervene, they CHOOSE not to.
Likewise, it was the REPUBLICANS in the Florida Senate who failed to pass the last state bill.
And REPUBLICAN judges have signed up for Terri's death on the reviews they have given.
But it won't be Terri's death that really does the Republicans in. The Bushes will be blamed, rightly, forever, and they will be diminished in the eyes of the pro-life right.
The bigger political story is that the Republican Party in the Senate is using this as an opportunity to back away from the Constitutional Option to override the filibuster and install conservative strict-constructionalist judges.
THAT will be the betrayal, if it comes to pass, that will split the party. Millions of pro-lifers will stop contributing, stop manning the phone banks and GOTV efforts, and they will stay home, heartbroken and unrepresented. Maybe an explicitly Christian Pro-life party will be founded. More probably, the demoralized Christians will drop out of politics and turn more fully to God and the other world.
And the result of that in the material world will be a new Democratic majority. Because without the pro-life Christians, the Republicans are the minority party in America.
Mostly, the shift to Democratic dominance will hurt secular Republicans. Christian pro-life Republicans are mostly poorer, don't have much in the way of capital gains or dividends, and are in the lower tax brackets. They benefit least from the Republican tax agenda, and would be hurt the least by Democratic tax-and-spend redistribution.
At any rate, they won't CARE. They organized and voted for the GOP because THEY believe life is sacred, and they believed that the GOP was the party trying to protect life.
In the Schiavo case, the Republicans in all three branches of government, at the Federal and State level, failed completely to stand up to the culture of death when the crunch came. They talked a good game, but bailed.
If they bail on the nuclear option, the Republican majority is finished. Absolutely nothing can keep millions of Christians in the party any more if that happens. And those millions of Christians are the margin of victory.
Of course, after a few years in the wilderness, the Christians might well form a Christian Life party whose central policy agenda is pro-life, and who cooperate with either the Democrats or Republicans on anything else, including caucusing in a Congress split three ways without a majority. Having a Christian pro-life party that was focused on the issue and only willing to enter into coalition if its views on life were respected would keep its allied major party honest.
But that might never happen, because Christians are not prone to be political. They BECAME political over abortion and life issues, and for 30 years SEEMED to be building something in the Republican Party. In one week, the Republican party completely failed them.
If the Republicans don't pass that Nuclear Option, the divorce will be complete and their star will fall.
To my knowledge, no single-issue party has ever elected anyone to anything (other than to local elections). I do agree with you on the assessment that now, if the nuclear option isn't exercised to break the Dems' obstruction, a lot of Christians may walk away from politics, and the GOP will be consigned again to minority status.
Care to point out where the President has any authority to do what you think he can do?