Religious Right will draw blood tomorrow

Sarah Palin, queen of oogedy-boogedy, recorded a Va. robocall, mostly about herself. She also endorsed the New York 23rd District Conservative Party candidate, turning that race on it's head.

In April conservative columnist Kathleen Parker was mulling the obituary of the Religious Right - the oogedy-boogedy branch of the Republican Party. And tomorrow, very much alive, they're likely to romp here and there.

Progressive Sara Posner writes:

From Virginia to New York to Maine, the religious right is playing a key in tomorrow's off-year elections. The reports of its death were greatly exaggerated.

. . .

Every other election cycle or so, the religious right makes noises that it might have to form a third party of its own. Although the likelihood of success for Christianist third party is nil, this "values voters" grandstanding is not an empty threat. It moves GOP candidates, particularly in the primaries, to the right. They can't win without the Christian right money or ground troops.

She then conducts a tour of races in which the Religious Right has imposed its will, most notably in NY-23 where, win or lose, Sarah Palin & Co. ejected a Republican moderate and put a Conservative Party candidate in the lead.

They're not the same, but the search for a redeeming new name isn't on the minds of the prevailing Religious Right leaders tonight. That doesn't mean they're really back in electoral charge, however. It means they aren't dead.

Did someone seriously think they would be dead? They have long made their political living by manipulating a target audience they know well and they are, of course, still good at it.

Yes, Virginia, there is a thesis

Virginia Republican gubernatorial candidate Robert F. McDonnell has on the strength of his 1989 master's thesis attracted considerable attention to Regent University, his Pat Robertson-founded alma mater. Even piquing the Washington Post to pen an expansive piece about the school.

Since McDonnell's thesis looked with a jaundiced eye on working women, the creation of tax credits for child care, feminism, homosexuality in general and the use of contraception by married couples, Regent students are a little worried about being misunderstood in this perhaps more enlightened era.

Helpfully, WaPo Staff Writer Ian Shapira collected a list of more recent theses, writing:

Student theses archived at Regent's library reveal a generational difference between the school's early years in the 1980s, when it was known as Christian Broadcasting Network University, and its recent history. Early theses have titles such as "The Role of the Press in Disseminating Communist Propaganda as a Foreign Policy Strategy of Totalitarian Governments," and "Homosexuals' American Dream . . . or Nightmare," a study that advocated "Criminalizing Homosexuality -- The First Line of Defense." Thesis titles from the 21st century: "U2's Gospel of Modulation in a Decade of Change" and "Federal Funding for Needle Exchange Programs," which advocated the idea as a way to prevent HIV.

There.

That should clear things up. About Regent. Not about McDonnell. Post-thesis revelation poll numbers showed McDonnell's opponent had moved to within striking range:

Dramatic shifts among independent female voters and Northern Virginians over the past month have propelled Democrat R. Creigh Deeds to within four points of Republican Robert F. McDonnell in the race for Virginia governor, according to a new Washington Post poll.
The change among likely voters -- down from a 15-point margin in mid-August -- coincides with the publication and ensuing controversy surrounding McDonnell's graduate school thesis, in which he writes of his opposition to working women, feminists and gay people.

Sigh. Maybe being a true, red (blue isn't Republican) member of the Christian Right ain't what it used to be. After all, McDonnell has been a good Ralph Reedster, attracting Reed's help and praise in the early days. McDonnell is a political child of Robertson's Christian Coalition and enjoys the group's current support.

But you don't have to use or subscribe to misguided terms like Paliban to see that those alliances and any associated thesis-embalmed views are no longer taint free and cannot be retrospectively disowned.