Kathleen Parker of the theocratic right

I think this is close to the problem:

It isn't that culture doesn't matter. It does. But preaching to the choir produces no converts. And shifting demographics suggest that the Republican Party -- and conservatism with it -- eventually will die out unless religion is returned to the privacy of one's heart where it belongs.

Religious conservatives become defensive at any suggestion that they've had something to do with the GOP's erosion. And, though the recent Democratic sweep can be attributed in large part to a referendum on Bush and the failing economy, three long-term trends identified by Emory University's Alan Abramowitz have been devastating to the Republican Party: increasing racial diversity, declining marriage rates and changes in religious beliefs.

Suffice it to say, the Republican Party is largely comprised of white, married Christians. Anyone watching the two conventions last summer can't have missed the stark differences: One party was brimming with energy, youth and diversity; the other felt like an annual Depends sales meeting.

With the exception of Miss Alaska, of course.

She continues and makes some pretty indisputable points about demographics. In terms of religion, I'm up in the air about that. The GOP doesn't just bank on the faithful, they bank on the sort of white faithful who tend to repel everyone else. Jerry Falwell wasn't just some white Southern preacher, he was segregationists who'd excoriated Martin Luther King. These guys didn't just push the heathens out, they actually pushed out some of the faster growing subsets among the god-fearing. They're taking their slice of the pie, but only a slice of their slice.

I do think that Terri Schiavo was a huge blunder. The thing that the GOP missed in all that is that the only thing Americans may respect more than religion, is the privacy of the family. Whatever you think about Schiavo, it had to have been a lot of people's nightmare to see their last days, not just weighed out in court, but subject to congressional resoloutions. I really think that Schiavo was, in Mobb Deep parlance, the start of their ending. It was a shocking, shocking overreach.