Is Bush a Religous Zealot Or Is He Pandering?

Keller at the NY Times -- Bombastic evangelical power brokers like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson have aged into irrelevance, and now exist mainly as ludicrous foils. Their attempt to turn the war on terror into a religious war — Mr. Robertson called the prophet Muhammad "a wild-eyed fanatic," and Franklin Graham, the preacher son of Billy Graham and a friend of Mr. Bush's, described Islam as "evil" — afforded Mr. Bush a chance to play ecumenical healer by rebuking them.

At the same time, noted Mr. Green, who has studied the Christian right, many local activists have gravitated into the Republican Party as county chairmen and campaign consultants. Once an independent force hammering at the president and Congress, they are now an institutional part of the party base. They must be kept mollified — but in balance with other parts of the coalition, like business, and within the bounds of what a majority of voters will accept. Karl Rove, the White House political genius, has a master plan for enlarging that ecumenical array of believers — churchgoing Catholics, Mormons and Jews as well as the evangelicals — and welding them permanently into the Republican mainstream.

The interesting story, then, is not that Mr. Bush is a captive of the religious right, but that his people are striving to make the religious right a captive of the Republican Party.

My Take - as a New York elitist he is too dismissive of the Christian right power and agenda but he is correct about the Republicans capturing the fundamentalists.