Griper Blade: An Election Without the Religious Right?

Something in my paper caught my eye last night. It illustrates a point I've made in earlier posts -- the Republicans are in trouble. John Nichols, in a piece in The Capital Times, tells us, "Barack Obama might beat both Hillary Clinton and John McCain on Tuesday." In other words, Obama may beat not only Clinton, but attract more voters than the winner of the Republican primary.

The part that caught my eye was a breakdown of the vote in Iowa along party lines. Depending on which party you're rooting for, the results are either not pretty or beautiful.

Almost 25 percent of all Iowans who caucused last Thursday did so for Obama.

Another 20.5 perecent caucused for Edwards, while 19.8 percent caucused for Clinton.

And what of the winner of the Republican caucuses?

Mike Huckabee won a mere 11.4 percent.

So a quarter of Iowa caucus-goers came out for the winner of the highly competitive Democrats, while barely 10 percent came out for the Republican victor.

Add to that other polling that shows that evangelicals represented "some 60 percent of Republican caucusgoers."

Mr. Romney's advisers had been saying that if evangelical turnout rose to more than 50 percent, victory would be impossible for Mr. Romney, whose Mormon faith is regarded as heretical by many evangelicals. Mr. Romney's past support for abortion rights also troubled many Christian conservatives.

Since Mike Huckabee didn't win his caucus by more than 60%, we can safely assume that these "values voters" were extremely fragmented in their thinking. In Iowa, at least, the religious right is in disarray...

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