Our existing electoral mechanisms make that highly unlikely, but I like the way you’re heading. See this thread: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=269169
Uh, yeah, but the point is that that will probably not be the case shortly. Notice that the christian right is RIGHT NOW launching a very concerted effort to help Republicans wrest control of the judiciary. You ought to take a gander at the Website of the big Christian political groups TODAY:
website of Reclaiming America - Frist Offers Compromise on Judicial Nominations
Baptist News website of the Southern Baptist convention. **Judicial nominees should get up-or-down vote, Bush tells prime-time TV audience **
Look at the Christian Broadcasting Network News. What’s their top story.** Congress Remains Deadlocked on Judge Nominees**
The Family Research Council - the whole first page is devoted to judicial nominations. They’re the people who Bill Frist spoke to on the issue.
Why do you think they’ve launched this blitz? You think it’s just an academic argument? The principle of it? I’d say it’s because they plan to put through policies that they know would be tossed as unconstitutional now.
Nobody’s arguing that these people are “new” or even trying to demonize them particularly. IMHO the existence of christian extremists is a predictable natural reaction of the far end of the bell curve to modernity.
But what’s new to me is just how organized and politically active these groups are and that they’re about to have power unprecedented for religious extremists in this country. We DO know that the right wing will have control of the judiciary shortly. Even if democrats retain the filibuster they’re not going to stop that from happening, they’ll only slow it down. The issue at hand is once the right wing has total control of the government including the judiciary - will they stifle the christian right? Or will they institute their policies?
You want the Godgoons to fall to internecine bickering, to sow confusion in their ranks? Easily done. I must demur from any association with such a cynical and dastardly scheme as this, I merely present a hypothetical. As a dewy-eyed and fuzzy-thinking lefty, I cannot approve of such chicanery as this.
Support faith-based programs. Move quickly to establish a given amount of money to gush from our treasury into thier outthrust palms. Lets say, oh, 25 billion dollars. No strings attached, can’t trust them, who can you trust, after all?
The unity of the Godgoons is a chimera, the tighty rightys exploit those few instances of total agreement, abortion, gay marriage, the ghastly persecution of people of faith, that sort of thing.
But if the Pentecostals look over and see the Southern Baptists cashing a big ol’ multimillion dollar check for their Outreach and Uplift program, and see $25.98 invested in their Remedial Snake Handling Program, their Christian charity and solidarity will vanish like the promise of spring in Minneapolis.
You see, the Devil isn’t in the details, the Devil is in the money.
How do you think I feel? York (where the push for ID in Pennsylvania began) is no more than 30 minutes down the road from here…
As uglybeech notes, your statement would be more accurately given as, “…the current Supreme Court would rule against it.”
Let’s check back at the end of Bush’s current term.
I’m not “scared,” but I’m decidedly nervous. There’s a seismic shift unprecedented in the history of our nation, nay, the world, under way at the moment. We live in a time of remarkable future history, and I don’t know if I’m particularly happy about it.
Let’s be clear about what “it” is. I was specifically talking about teaching creationism in schools. The 'religious right" is concerned about a number of issues from gay marriage to abortion to Ten Commandments in Courthouses. And even the abortion issue is more nuanced than should it be legal or illegal. I don’t see any Bush nominees overturning Roe v Wade, but they may be more sympathetic to placing more limitations on abortions (eg, parental notification) over which reasonable people can disagree. As for the other issues, I still don’t see a Bush packed SCOTUS ruling any differently than the current court.
You’re going to hell elucidator, but thanks for lifting my spirits. 
I like your thinking too but I sense that that’s never going to happen without some sort of cataclysmic event completely changing the political landscape. These are coalitions - complex webs of alliances that took decades to forge. I can’t see them abandoning each other unless absolutely forced. It is a pity though.
may I suggest calming down a bit? Maybe those who fear the Christian Facists should pause, and try this test: do a bit of cut-and-pasting.
Go back to your post above, and replace the words “Christian facists” with “Islamic terrorists”
Take a liberal reporter’s dramatic investigative story that reveals the true danger of ,say, the Dominions, using scary quotes about “pledging allegience to the Christian flag”.Now send the same reporter to a Muslim madrassa in New Jersey, where Jihad is proudly taught. Would we get the same story?
We are usually told that the Muslim fanatics are a small minority, they don’t really constitute a danger, legal maneuvers like the Patriot Act are over-reacting and unnecessary to protect us, etc.
But if it’s Christian fanatics we’re talking about, than head for the bomb shelters, our entire country is in danger, legal maneuvers like appointing judges are insufficient reaction to protect us.
The fanatics are a very small minority. But America is a very big country.
If in fact they are such a small minority, why then are they so well represented in the legislature and executive branches of government?
You don’t see too many Muslim fanatics in Washington.
I think, in our two-party, winner-take-all system, with an electorate split virtually evenly down the middle on virtually every issue, tiny minorities can weild enormously disproportionate influence when they reward results so consistently. Add the viral meme aspect, and vigilance is indeed warranted. Yeah, fundies are used no less cynically than blacks or gays, but the latter two are more liable to turn on you, or worse, adopt middle-to-right socioeconomics when they reach the middle class and invade the burbs in significant numbers. I don’t think the nation has been this tenuously-balanced in terms of Constitutional philosophy since the Civil Rights movement. If religious conservatives get even a tenth of what they want (and they tend to be deceptively patient with, and surprisingly grateful for, incremental progress, unlike lefty minorities), we may become more ideologically divided than at any time since the Civil War. It’s not exactly time to go all Chicken Little, but it’s cause for grave concern all the same.
Only FIVE months???
Dammit! Feels like ten years already. :smack: