1 - will the Republicans ever again be able to field a Presidential candidate whose core appeal isn't to the Christian right?
2 - should the Democrat strategy be to try and build an anti-evangelical coalition, or is there scope for a Democrat Presidential candidate to split this demographic without alienating the party's core vote?

It is hard to govern through a coalition though -- the white fundies enjoy higher unanimity than the coalition of the Other -- and it shows.

I am not sure that the evangelicals can be relied on to vote strongly for Republicans so much as for those that share what they perceive to be their values...And it is possible that as more moderate Christians point out that Christ was NOT about greed and killing your opponents, the less the "swing" evangelicals will be able to be relied on to blindly follow the right wing.  From my very limited research, i don't find that the real audience for televangelism has increased, although CBN's market penetration has...in other words, there isn't a lot of evidence that there are more evangelicals, simply that they are currently louder...and are possibly repelling some borderline cases with their increasing Zelotry.

If the evangelicals break for the bad guys, and non-Christian voters break for our guys, anyway, shouldn't we be spending a lot of time thinking about... Catholics? I suspect that every winning presidential candidate since 1960s has won Catholics. Of course, "Catholics" isn't really the name of a bloc-- it's the name of several blocs, including single-issue pro-life voters, union households, most (not all!) Latinos, etc.

What does the GOP do?  This reminds me a bit of Gov. Wilson's alienation of Latino voters -- the only thing that brought them back to the GOP since was an aberrational celebrity candidate (who never would have been nominated in a GOP primary in CA).  Otherwise, since Wilson, the state is safely blue (before a GOPer quibbles, what are the odds that Bush or a Senate candidate comes within 10 points of the Dem in the state)

Do you think that the trend of the GOP focusing on evangelical voters and Southern evangelical voters in particular -- at the expense of appealing to non-evangelical voters -- is a permanent thing?  

I do for two reasons, but am interested in whether my logic is faulty.  

First, future GOP presidential candidates have to run to their base until they win the nomination.  The base of the GOP in primary and caucus states lies primarily in the Christian evangelical vote.  You piss them off (Guiliani, Arnold, certainly Powell, probably Pataki) by being pro-choice or pro-gay marriage (or by not offering specific overtures to the evangelical community  -- such as visiting Bob Jones University) and you're done.

Second, remember that the face of the GOP when they don't have the WH is in Congress.  Those Congressional folks are in safe, unrepresentative seats in the South -- where being ultraconservative is not an insult.  John Judis (I think) wrote a great piece about this:  how the GOP captured the South and how, in turn, the South captured the GOP.

This is a bad long-term strategy for a party, as much as it might make sense short-term -- focusing on a portion of society that at times defines itself by not being representative of society as a whole (witness home schooling, or decrying the degradation of the rest of culture).

GL talks of conservatives world view being organized around a strict father metaphor and liberals viewing the world through nurturant parent priorities. Strict father authoritarian discipline is very much in line with the born again world. You submit totally to the "Father" and you must submit in order to be saved.
Liberal nurturant parent authoritative views are not as narrow and allow for interaction rather than just submission.

The authoritarian/authoritative split is also what is happening with Kerry getting slammed for questioning Bush. The authoritarian model derives it's power and authority from the role or the office - in the authoritative model, authority and power is given by consensus or agreement that you are knowledgeable or competent in a particular area. Put another way authority and power arise "of the people, by the people and for the people".

It is really astonishing that Conservatives would ignore this aspect of merit in favor of a blind observance of title considering the rhetoric of the supremacy of individual achievement.

It blows my mind that this administration gets away with such Orwellian redefinitions of themselves and anyone who opposes them. This election is about "1984" and whether we want that to be fiction or prophesy.

What this all means.

The states that CLEARLY stand out are Arizona, Colorado and Florida.  Florida should be an old friend by now; we know about that.  Arizona and Colorado are surprises though.  We have seen them flirting back and forth with swing-state status, but it hasn't been taken all that serously before.  This leads me to believe that there may be more to this than I had considered.

We have invested a huge amount of organizational effort and targeted a lot of advertising on Ohio, which has a higher ratio of White-Evangelicals than either AZ or CO.  Perhaps a wee bit more of that money and effort should have been spent in AZ or CO.  Perhaps it's not too late to do it.  

Late targeting of states isn't always a bad idea.  Gore gave up prematurely on Tennessee during the 2000 campaign because of faulty polling data (faulty, still, obviously).  He was close enough there that a little effort might have made the difference there.

Second point.

The Bush base is clearly White Evangelicals.  We always knew that, but this makes it even more stark.  

Somebody suggested running against White Evangelicals.  This would, IMHO, be a bad idea.  The WE's might be far more inclined to vote for Bush, but antagonizing them might just activate Bush's base and get out their vote.  A better strategy would be to run ads targeted at specific niche groups that feel neglected.

This is where the Hispanic vote becomes very important.  Spanish ads go straight to the target demographic.  Things can be said in Spanish ads that might resonate the wrong way in English.  I don't mean that we should run a two-faced campaign, but certain social-justice themes that are more popular with Hispanics than with the population at large can be addressed more boldly without affecting the message to the non-Spanish-speaking electorate.

I don't know why the above strategy hasn't been used more than it has to date.  It's so simple and clear.  Hispanics are a great demographic group for Democrats.  Spanish ads are cheaper to run than English ads.  They are more likely to reach motivated Democrats.  There are some Spanish ads out there, but most of them tend to be translations of the English ads, or pale imitations of the same themes.  

Every day, FOX says the election is about these things. As long as real issus aren't on the front-burner, we won't have real politics.

Why was Lott pushed out, and Frist moved in?  Not because of some crack Lott had made a few times before, but because Frist is Religious Right, Lott is an old Dixiecrat (Racist Right).

Arizona is, by one measure, the most conservative state in America (racist/xenophobe).  What measure?  Jon Kyl is the most conservative Senator.  Shadegg, Stump and Flake are three of the most conservative Representatives (in the five most conservative of the 435).

I'm sick of George Lakoff, by the way.  Forget "frames."  The media only bothers to talk about certain things, ergo, the rump of America only knows that much.  Why do you need a metaphor?  Maybe it is because I don't, that I don't need Lakoff.  Sorry!

The real trick is proving there was a God.  You heard me, not to prove there is no God.  

Names of God in the Tanakh(Old Testament): Yahweh, Elohim, El, Eloah, Eloh

Elohim is plural, we've always known that.

The rumor from a Dead Sea Scrolls scholar is that "El" was a guy, "Elohim" were his 70 kids.

All we have to do is prove it.  Not that there is no god, but that there was a guy called "God."

So basically, if we looked at, say, white voters on the coasts, would they be as rep-leaning as whites across the entire country? I don't know if anyone has ever seen this data broken out but I think it's worth considering.

We are all Americans and painting minorities as voting robots is condescending. The scare tactics used to hold their vote such as calling the Republican Party the "White" party, does not bring this country together. It capitalizes on racial rifts and widens them for political gain. JFK(Kennedy) did a lot for minorities which I personally admire, it was southern democrats that fought him on segregation and don't forget the first republican President freed the slaves.

The President believes in teaching a man to fish instead of continually giving him fish and expecting a vote in return. He has many minorities in his cabinet and has tried to get many minorities into judicial positions. You could argue that it was done for political reasons, but Rice and Powell among others are the people he trusts. Republicans also pushed through Clarence Thomas through a smear campaign by the democrats. These positions show minorities that they too can believe in and participate in the American Dream. Please understand that any attacks in this article is pointed at leadership in the Democratic party not democrats themselves, there are good and bad people in both parties.

There really is a religious left out there. I'd love to see a liberal-religio political 'resurrection'.

By the same token, many white Protestants vote against their liberal economic positions in order to vote for Republicans supporting conservative social issues. Democrats seem to be saying, "give up your silly anti-abortion fixation and you'll have a home with us."

It seems ridiculous (from a left-wing POV anyway) to ask African-Americans to give up on Affirmative Action; but from a right-wing POV, it seems equally ridiculous for white Protestants to give up on abortion. Yet as people considered outside of their demographics, these people are ideologically very very close and share views on nearly everything. If either side did begin to shift in numbers, we'd see a catastrophic shift in political power and the days of the 50/50 nation would be gone.

This is really why we need people like George Lakoff -- both sides vote against part of their interests, and whoever is first to frame those interests in a way that causes their targeted block to change priorities will end up dominating political power for half a century.

PS -- there's about a million Buddhists out here and not a one of us is voting for Bush.