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The are never a factor. They don't elect anyone ..They don't defeat anyone. They are not a factor. That is why Karl Rove does not give a hoot what they do. They are not important.

Thanks for posting that information! Found an article recently that said that Pres Reagan regretted bringing the religious right into the Republican Party because they could not be counted on to vote or support and were the biggest complainers.

What I'm concluding is that all of the Bush-bashing from the "true conservatives" is essentially a front in the war for the soul of conservativism, in which the paleos- are trying to run the neo-conservatives (whose emergence on the scene resulted in the election of Ronald Reagan) out of the conservatism. The fact is, some people have a narrow definition of "conservatism" (their own), and anyone who strays from that narrow definition, really isn't a conservative. They, and their leader, most likely Pat Buchanan, want to take conservativism back to the "glory days" of where it was in the 1940s, when it couldn't get a dogcatcher elected in central Kansas. They claim Reagan is their hero, but it is Reagan who pulled together all of the people with various interests whom the "true believers" now want to drive out of the movement.

These "conservatives" are a pretty exclusive bunch, and a pretty exclusionary bunch as well. Their view of the world is fairly narrow; they are essentially pessimistic about everything; they are strident in their attitudes and obnoxious in their behavior. But, I guess, they think the glory days of conservatism were when conservatism was narrow, exclusive, strident and obnoxious.

I think what really bothers them is that George W. Bush operates, pretty much all of the time, from a set of values which are decent and honorable, and not from a rigid "conservative" ideology. What I'd like to know is when did honor and decency stop being conservative values?