Are Evangelicals Over?

By Alan Wolfe, Comment Is Free. Posted October 17, 2006.

With the recent revelations that Bush aides mocked members of their Christian base, it has become increasingly clear to many evangelicals that their alliance with the Republicans is not paying off.

American elections in which no president is chosen are usually hum-drum affairs interesting only to policy wonks. Not 2006. Though not on any ballot, the question voters will be answering is: Has the religious right peaked?

Barring some miracle, it has. I am just back from a two-day visit to Regent University, founded by the evangelist Pat Robertson, a key figure in the religious right. "What you need to understand," a Robertson supporter told me, "is that Pat opposed the war in Iraq from the start." I responded that according to the Lancet, some 600,000 Iraqis have died since the war began. If Robertson had publicly opposed the war, I told them, his influential voice might have spared those lives. "But," one of them answered back, "Pat is a Republican who would not openly oppose the president."