Gallup Polls makes a strange finding. They measured current Republican Identification and Leaning and then compared today’s numbers to the numbers from 2001. They found a decline in every subgroup except one. People that frequently attend church (meaning, usually, more than once a week) show no change in their political affiliation as a result of the Bush administration and the Congress of Tom DeLay and Bill Frist. It’s hard to believe that malfeasance and incompetence on such an epic scale could fail to result in a decline in support in every conceivable demographic, but something about being extremely religious seems to inoculate people against seeing calamity for what it is. I understand that Karl Rove positioned the GOP as the party of fundamentalist Christianity, but it’s stunning that the Republicans have managed to hold this group considering how little they actually delivered to them.
The problem the Republicans have as a result of these changes in their base is that every Republican primary will now take on the flavor of a PTA meeting in Kansas.
