With too much attention paid to far-right, Glenn Beck-loving, John Birch Society-based tea partiers these days, most know nothing about the fact that the Religious Right is still a major bulwark of the Republican Party.
One of the major Religious Right players, the Christian Coalition of America, will be doing this October what they've done for more than 20 years now -- distributing voter guides that implicitly encourage voting for Republicans via conservative Christian churches.
For example, this Pat Robertson-spawned group will be getting 3 million voter guides out in Florida next Sunday, via tax-exempt churches.
In 2008, 8.4 million Floridians voted; in a mid-term election, these voter guides could easily reach half the voters in Florida.
More, below.
The CCA's voter guides are an obvious GOTV tactic, given their timing and content.
And now, you don't have to attend a conservative Christian church on the Sunday two weeks before election to get one -- the voter guides are online.
You have to give them an e-mail address and state, then you get to see what they're up to.
Reflecting their coordination with Republicans, the CCA concentrates on high-profile races where their electioneering may have an impact -- they only do 53 House races, and most of those are familiar.
I checked out the New York/NY-20 voter guide -- here are the up-or-down issues the CCA asked about, in their words:
Increase in federal income tax rates
"Hate Crimes" legislation that designates crimes as more severe due to the
perpetrator's thoughts and motivations
Further restrictions on the right to keep and bear arms
Public funding of abortions, (such as govt. health benefits and Planned
Parenthood)
Federal Marriage Amendment to prevent same sex marriage
Enforcing the 1993 law banning homosexuals in the military
Federal government run health care system
Allowing individuals to invest a portion of their Social Security tax in private retirement accounts
Eight loaded questions, three about hating on the gays, just one on abortion, one on guns, and three on economic issues.
The reported results in NY-20 were odd in couple of ways.
The positions of GOP challenger Chris Gibson on the hate-the-gays questions and the abortion were listed as "unknown."
Gibson has been running a tea party campaign, largely based on economic issues and vilifying Nancy Pelosi, and evidently doesn't want to antagonize the few gays and many women in the district who might vote for him.
But it's hard to believe that a career Army officer running for Congress as a Republican has no position on DADT, or that any GOP candidate anywhere has no position on public funding of abortions.
The "unknown" for incumbent Rep. Scott Murphy on the gun question makes little sense, since Murphy has won the endorsement of the NRA.
The voter guides are based on answers to CCA questionnaires and "voting records and/or public statements." It is likely that neither Murphy or Gibson returned their questionnaires.
I doubt the CCA electioneering will have much effect in New York state and NY-20, because there just aren't that many conservative Protestants here.
But CCA, like the RNCC, is targeting lots of NY Congressional seats in more conservative parts of the state -- NY-1, NY-19, NY-23 and NY-24, in addition to NY-20.
Aside from in-church distribution of the voter guides, CCA encourages its people to go online, print out a voter guide, and:
Make copies and distribute them to friends and family members, in churches and Christian bookstores, businesses and Christian schools throughout your community. You can even make them available as handouts at polling stations on Election Day.
CCA is no longer the largest Religious Right political organization, but it's still committed to getting its vote out for Republicans every other year, using millions of slanted voter guides.