Evangelical Christians = Charlie Brown and Lucy = Republican Party

MSNBC's Countdown with Keith Olbermann reports on "Tempting Faith", the book by David Kuo who worked for Bush from 2001 to 2003, in which Kuo reveals that BushCo was just using the Christians.

More than five years after President Bush created the Office of Faith-Based Initiatives, the former second-in-command of that office is going public with an insider’s tell-all account that portrays an office used almost exclusively to win political points with both evangelical Christians and traditionally Democratic minorities.

[...]

He says some of the nation’s most prominent evangelical leaders were known in the office of presidential political strategist Karl Rove as “the nuts.”

“National Christian leaders received hugs and smiles in person and then were dismissed behind their backs and described as ‘ridiculous,’ ‘out of control,’ and just plain ‘goofy,’” Kuo writes.

Digby says:

This sounds as though the GOP thinks that conservative Christian leaders are dupes, but I doubt that is literally true. I think they understand each other quite well and have plenty of respect for their different roles in the power structure. It's obvious to me that both the Republicans and the leaders of the Religious Right are contemptuous of rank and file conservative Christians, not each other.

[...]

It's time everybody recognized that so we can deal with it honestly. These so-called religious leaders (and it's not just the national leadership, it's the whole hierarchy) are not dupes. Sure Rove and the rest call them nuts. But the leadership and the party know they are essentail to each others' continued status, even if they spar over who's their daddy. The truth is that they are all elites who have the same goals --- power.

The big losers are the followers who are being sold a cheap bill of goods by both the Christian Right leadership and the Republican Party. Maybe some day they'll wise up but it's a tall order. It means they have to lose faith in both their church and their party and I wonder how many of them have that in them. It would be a terrible disillusionment.

There's a vacuum to be filled in the evangelical leadership by preachers and leaders who eschew worldly, political power for its own sake. It remains to be seen if anyone steps up to claim it --- and whether the sincere believers are not just "red team members" but true Christians who will reject the Elmer Gantrys who have been playing them for fools.