health care

Sharron Angle

Ad: Controversy over latest anti-immigration ad, Latino groups call it “one of the ugliest anti-illegal immigrants ad campaigns in history” (AP, 10/26).

Voting: Accuses Reid camp of trying to “steal” the election (Politico, 10/26).

Campaign: Stopped paying her staff in latest FEC filing (HuffPo, 10/25).

Outside groups: Pro-GOP groups outspend Democrats 2:1 in Nevada (AP, 10/23).

Ken Buck

Religious Right: Denies existence of separation of church and state (Think Progress, 10/26).

Women: Mother Jones investigates Buck’s handling of the rape case (Mother Jones, 10/26).

Ad: PFAW releases new ad on Buck’s corporate backers (PFAW, 10/25).
 

Joe Miller

Background: Records show Miller’s unethical, dishonest behavior at job (WSJ, 10/26).

Gay rights: Miller gives confusing, contradictory interview to Rachel Maddow about gay rights and federalism (HuffPo, 10/26).

Palin: Rally keynoted by Palin will feature Mike Huckabee, Jim DeMint and Michele Bachmann (Politico, 10/26).

Media: Avoids press other than Fox News (CBS News, 10/21).

Christine O’Donnell

Poll: Trails Coons, especially among self-described moderates (Miami Herald, 10/27).

Constitution: Hammered for not knowing what’s in the 14th Amendment (Politico, 10/27).

Tea Party: Tea Party Express bus tour coming to Delaware (The News Journal, 10/27).

Rand Paul

Campaign: Paul campaign coordinator charged with assault, demands apology from woman he attacked (Lexington Herald-Leader, 10/27; TPM, 10/27).

Health Care: Wants to repeal the “Patient’s Bill of Rights” (The Hill, 10/26).

GOP: Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell embraces Paul after opposing him in the primary (Politico, 10/26).

Pat Toomey

Government: Can’t name any programs beside “study abroad” he would cut (Think Progress, 10/26).

Poll: Tied with Sestak in Reuters/Ipsos poll (TPM, 10/26).

Outside groups: Club for Growth pledges to spend an additional $1 million to boost Toomey (WSJ, 10/21).

The Religious Right is already looking to 2012, and Joseph Farah of WorldNetDaily is heeding the alarm: if Mitt Romney becomes the GOP Presidential nominee, “America’s toast.” Farah believes that due to Romney’s cardinal sins of supporting a health care reform law in Massachusetts and being close to the GOP establishment make him “the most dangerous man in America.” Social conservatives already worked hard in 2008 to make sure that Mitt Romney was not the Republican Party’s nominee for President, let alone John McCain’s choice for Vice President. But Farah’s rhetoric against the former Massachusetts governor demonstrates the heightened fear that Romney will be the frontrunner in the 2012 Republican nomination contest:

Mitt Romney is the most dangerous man in America today because he is the only GOP presidential contender about whom I can make such an unequivocal statement. If he wins, we lose. America's toast.

I'm serious about this.

All the positive energy that was stirred up throughout middle America because of Obama's misdeeds will have nowhere to be channeled if he's the nominee.

Honestly, if he's the nominee, America's only hope will be revolution.

…

I wouldn't vote for Romney if he ran against Satan himself for president.

He needs to be the one candidate that faithful, liberty-loving Republicans agree can never be the nominee. His track record of flip-flopping on the major issues of the day is a disqualifier. No one is perfect, but Romney is perfectly awful. I would have expected my friend Robert Ringer to notice that.

I am hoping, as we get closer to 2012, that discerning Republicans heed this warning.

I intend to do everything in my power to alert the American electorate to the threat he poses.

This is not hyperbole: Mitt Romney is the most dangerous man in America today.

Haley Barbour

Washington: Ranked #1 of GQ’s “DC Power List” (GQ, 10/18).

Mississippi: NYT columnist looks into his record of pardons as Governor (NYT, 10/15).

GOP: Raises $31 million for Republican Governors Association (WaPo, 10/14).

Mitch Daniels

Economy: Hit by conservatives for floating idea of value added tax (Newsweek, 10/18).

2012: Praised by President of US Chamber of Commerce (Courier & Press, 10/13).

Newt Gingrich

2010: Predicts takeover of House and Senate by GOP (KTAR, 10/18).

Fundraising: His 527, which has no cap on donations, raised over $4 million (Politico, 10/16).

Mike Huckabee

Media: Brings Ohio GOP gubernatorial nominee on TV show, says he is “not the least bit objective” (Media Matters, 10/18).

Crime: Seattle Times looks into Huckabee’s pardon of Maurice Clemmons (Seattle Times, 10/17).

Religious Right: Tells “Freedom, Faith and Family” conference that God guided Founding Fathers, condemns abortion (Winston-Salem Journal, 10/16).

2010: Predicts a “tsunami of change” while campaigning for Indiana Republicans (Indiana News Center, 10/13).

Mitt Romney

2010: Campaigns for Wisconsin’s Scott Walker and Minnesota’s Tom Emmer (GOP12, 10/18).

Fundraising: Collects $1.7 million for leadership PAC over summer (Politico, 10/14).

Iowa: May not focus as much attention on Iowa Caucuses in 2012 as he did in 2008 (Des Moines Register, 10/14).

Sarah Palin

Tea Party: Launches Tea Party Express Bus Tour in Reno, NV (Christian Science Monitor, 10/18).

2010: Set to rally in Florida with Michael Steele and Marco Rubio after appearing with Steele in California (Politico, 10/18).

Religious Right: Speaks to Liberty and Freedom Foundation about patriotism, God, and Pat Tillman; knocks First Lady Michelle Obama (Opposing Views, 10/17).

George Pataki

Health Care: Wants 1 million people to sign his petition to repeal reform law (Jackson Citizen Patriot, 10/14; The Hill, 10/14).

Economy: Criticizes Obama Administration’s green-jobs initiatives (Wall Street Journal, 10/14).

Tim Pawlenty

GOP: Holds rally with Mitt Romney in Minnesota (Star Tribune, 10/18).

Government: Criticizes federal government spending but requests money from Washington for flood aid (Up Take, 10/18).

Fundraising: Leadership PAC raised over half a million dollars over the Summer (AP, 10/14).

Rick Santorum

Abortion: Set to address Tennessee Right to Life’s annual dinner (Knoxville News, 10/17).

Religious Right: Spoke Friday to Cornerstone Action fundraiser (CPR Action, 10/15).

As we have noted before, Democrats in Kansas have rightly been making an issue of Sam Brownback's ties to Lou Engle given that the two lived together for several months after Brownback's condo burned down. 

Recently, Brownback tried to distance himself a bit from Engle, saying that he had some concerns about some of Engle's views but for the most part Brownback has been trying to ignore the issue ... which is getting harder as Democrats continue to make it an issue:

Kansas Democrats are highlighting Republican gubernatorial nominee Sam Brownback's ties to a controversial evangelist, saying the association raises questions about his judgment.

The Kansas Democratic Party cites Brownback's appearance at a 2007 rally for evangelist Lou Engle, who has urged Christians to fast and pray that "God, the avenger of blood" will heal the nation's sins of abortion and homosexuality.

"Does Sam Brownback know where to draw the line?" said Kenny Johnston, the Kansas Democratic Party's executive director. "It's an important question to ask about Sam Brownback's judgment."

Brownback's opponent, Tom Holland, even released a statement questioning Brownback's ties to Engle:

"I have read the stories in the Topeka Capital-Journal, the Lawrence Journal World and by the Associated Press detailing Senator Brownback's relationship with Lou Engle, and my staff has shared with me additional information1 on Mr. Engle's views and statements. I found all of this to be very troubling.

"The next Governor of Kansas will need to bring people together, not divide them along lines of fear and bigotry.

"Whether it's upholding the executive ban on workplace discrimination against gays and lesbians, or preventing our state from being defined by the messages of Fred Phelps and Lou Engle – the next Governor has a responsibility to protect the rights of every Kansan.

"We've seen what happens when right-wing extremists get the spotlight; our state becomes a punch line on late night talk shows and companies think twice before bringing new jobs to our state. We can't go down that path again.

"I'm running to be a leader for all Kansans, so that we can continue our legacy as a Free State, where discrimination and bigotry – against anyone – is not tolerated."

Brownback's campaign refuses to comment, but as Bruce Wilson notes, it is not only Engle with whom he has ties, but other leaders like Dutch Sheets as well (you may recall how Sheets' prayers led to the capture of Saddam Hussein):

Former US Senator Brownback told the Topeka, Kansas Lawrence Journal-World, "He [Engle] said a number of things that I'm troubled by," and Brownback added, "I haven't had much association with him for some period of time." In Sam Brownback's lexicon, 'some period of time' would have to mean 'at least ten months' because back in December 2009 Brownback could be found up onstage with Lou Engle, who led the Family Research Council's nationally broadcast "Prayercast" against health care reform.

Brownback's disavowal elides his long association with Lou Engle. As I broke here at Talk To Action in late December 2009, Lou Engle says he and Sam Brownback lived together for 7 months in a rented Washington DC condominium. And, in footage from Brownback's 2007 appearance at Lou Engle's Nashville TheCall rally, evangelist Dutch Sheets stated that Brownback, whom Sheets called a personal friend to both Sheets, Lou Engle, and other mutual associates, had already attended four of Lou Engle's TheCall events.

If Brownback has "concerns" about Engle, it sure didn't stop him attending at least four of his The Call events.

Newt Gingrich

Extremism: Detractors condemn Gingrich’s increasingly heated rhetoric (Politico, 10/11).

Government: Calls Democrats “the party of food stamps” (AP, 10/7).

Health Care: Pushes repeal of reform law to business conference (The Bakersfield Californian, 10/9).

Mike Huckabee

2010: Solicits contributions for Alan Grayson’s opponent Dan Webster (Sunshine State News, 10/11).

Media: Coulter says Huckabee is the “only one true Christian liberal in the country” (Mediaite, 10/10).

Sarah Palin

Poll: Just 22% of Americans view Palin positively (CBS News, 10/6).

2010: Says midterm election represents a “Great Awakening” among voters (Politico, 10/11).

Media: Blasts the “lamestream media” and Tea Party critics at “Patriotic Gala” fundraiser (MSNBC, 10/11).

Foreign Affairs: Tells NewsMax that a nuclear Iran could “lead to an Armageddon” (News Max, 10/11).

Tim Pawlenty

Religious Right: Fundraises for Ralph Reed’s Faith and Freedom Coalition (Iowa Politics, 10/10).

Iowa: Visits three cities and hosts fundraiser with GOP gubernatorial nominee Terry Branstad (Radio Iowa, 10/11).

Health Care: Dubs reform law “one of the worst pieces of legislation in modern history” (Sioux City Journal, 10/9).

Ron Paul

Iowa: Speaking at University of Iowa and a GOP fundraiser later this month (Iowa Independent, 10/11).

Tea Party: Praises “Nullification” movement at Tea Party convention (Slate, 10/9).

Mike Pence

Religious Right: Tells Virginia Family Foundation that “the problems we have as a nation are not just political, but moral” (Richmond Times Dispatch, 10/10).

GOP: Headlines Reagan Day Dinner in Florida (Saint Peters Blog, 10/11).

Mitt Romney

Religious Right: Avoids comment on Mormon leader’s anti-gay speech (Salt Lake City Tribune, 10/7).

Health Care: MA Republicans don’t want Romney to denounce reform law he signed as governor (Boston Globe, 10/8).

Foreign Affairs: Knocks Obama for “apologizing for America” (The Bakersfield Californian, 10/9).

Rick Santorum

Iowa: Launches Iowa Keystone PAC to help state Republicans (Politico, 10/7).

Religious Right: Criticizes ACLU over reproductive rights (NewsMax, 10/9).

Although a number of media narratives describe 2010 election as revealing the rise of conservative woman, the "Awakening of the Conservative Woman," or the "Year of the Mama Grizzly," and what Sarah Palin calls “the emerging conservative, feminist identity,” it’s easy to forget that women have always played a prominent role in the conservative movement: Phyllis Schlafly, Clare Boothe Luce, and Beverly LaHaye, just to name a few.

But are women really running to embrace the rightwing agenda in 2010? Most polls show that the growing support for Republican candidates is a result of disproportionate backing from men, while Democrats still lead among women voters; Sarah Palin, the foremost Republican woman, is viewed favorably by an abysmally low 22% of Americans. But it is true that more and more women are running as Republicans for elected office, and the Religious Right has embraced the fiercely anti-choice Republican Senate candidates like Sharron Angle, Christine O’Donnell, Kelly Ayotte and Carly Fiorina. While it is difficult to say that women are turning to the GOP, at least one group is pushing the narrative that women will be at the center of the Right’s resurgence.

The Susan B. Anthony List was founded by Marjorie Dannenfelser and Jane Abraham, two women long-tied to Republican politics and anti-choice activism. Dannenfelser compared her fight against “the oligarchy of pro-choice women” to Susan B. Anthony’s campaign against second-class citizenship for women, and claims that Susan B. Anthony and the original women’s movement were all “strongly pro-life.”

Of course, real  historians and experts have thoroughly debunked Dannenfelser’s interpretation of women’s history: “Anthony spent no time on the politics of abortion. It was of no interest to her, despite living in a society (and a family) where women aborted unwanted pregnancies.” But the SBA List is now appropriating the legacy of Anthony and the women’s movement to serve their political agenda.

In 2010, SBA List has become a critical voice in the Religious Right in not only transforming the notion of “feminism” but also running extremely deceptive political ads. The group teamed up with the National Organization for Marriage to launch a $200,000 ad campaign against Democratic Senator Barbara Boxer targeted at the Latino community, claiming that Boxer opposed Comprehensive Immigration Reform. Naturally, PolitiFact rated their anti-Boxer ad to be “false” and “highly misleading,” as the Senator is one of the leading advocates of immigrant-rights in Washington.

Now, SBA List has just initiated a campaign targeting anti-choice Democrats who voted in favor of Health Care Reform by employing the immensely discredited and deceptive charge that the new law leads to “taxpayer funding of abortion.” Politico reports that the group plans to spend millions of dollars on television and radio advertisements, billboards, and a bus tour. SBA List has invested heavily in Carly Fiorina of California, New Hampshire GOP nominee Kelly Ayotte, a star of the anti-abortion rights movement, and said that the ultraconservative Nevada Republican Sharron Angle represents an “authentic, pro-life feminism that puts the ‘feminine’ back in the word” who would make “Susan B. Anthony proud.” Yes, the SBA List has such a warped view of feminism that they call the same Sharron Angle who described the situation of a girl impregnated by her father as “really [turning] a lemon situation into lemonade” an “authentic” feminist. Their other top candidate, State Rep. Jackie Walorski of Indiana who is running for the House, is a staunch Religious Right advocate who notoriously sunk hate-crimes legislation by trying to add “fetuses” as a protected class of citizens.

Sarah Palin has emerged as the symbolic head of SBA List, and the group founded the Team Sarah website to attract more women to their brand of “feminism.” “It’s only natural that women like these are responding to someone like Sarah Palin,” writes Dannenfelser, and “now millions of Americans, men and women, are going to the polls to make 2010 not only the Year of the Pro-Life Woman but the dawn of the Decade of Pro-Life Women.”

While SBA List’s view of feminism is different from the more openly anti-feminist groups like Eagle Forum and the Independent Women’s Forum, the groups essentially share the same reactionary ideas and principles. SBA List merely cloaks their anti-women’s rights agenda around a right-wing understanding of “feminism” and a misconstrued view of history.

The Family Research Council Action PAC has announced that it is spending $125,000 to air ads targeting five Democratic members of Congress - Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ-8), Betsy Markey (D-CO-4), Carol Shea-Porter (D-NH-1), John Boccieri (D-OH-16), and Tom Perriello (D-VA-5) -for voting "for business-crushing pieces of legislation, including the new health care law that allows for taxpayer funding of abortions":

The ad features a working-class American with a man in a suit hanging on his back, representing "big government."

The American says:

"I woke up one morning and it was there: big government on my back. It's a huge problem. It's affecting everyone. They're taking over our health care, using our money to bail out big business."

"Even our kids are in trouble," the ad continues, since the government is leaving trillions of dollars in debt for them to pay off.

It concludes: "Congress supported big health care, big bailouts, big debt. Get Washington off our backs – stop big government on Election Day."

Back in August, Ken Hutcherston wrote a column for WorldNetDaily in which he argued that the behavior of gays ought to be regulated by the government for health reasons:

Legislators around the country are considering banning sugar and fatty foods in schools, removing salt and butter from restaurants and want to control what temperature you can have in your own homes, because they fear the potential of health problems. Perhaps they should consider banning the promotion of a lifestyle that the Centers For Disease Control has determined actually causes HIV/AIDS. On the Day of Silence, an entire school day is set aside to ensure every young, impressionable student is exposed to homosexuality. Does this really make sense to you?

The column apparently impressed David Barton and Rick Green of Wallbuilders enough to make Hutcherson and his column the focus of their radio program today during which the two discussed the need to have the government to regulate homosexual conduct while warning that failure to do so would lead to the destruction of the United States within three generations:

Barton: We’re a health-conscious people, no question …

Green: We are, very.

Barton: We have a Department of Health and Human Services; we have health care bills; we have health insurance and we’re trying to stop all unhealthy things so we’re going after transfats and we’re going after transparency in labeling to make sure we get all the healthy stuff in there. And we’re going after school lunch programs and we’re trying to get juices in schools and Cokes out of schools and snack machines out of schools. And we’re trying to tell McDonalds what they can use and how they can cook their french fries because it’s unhealthy. And we’ve got cigarettes and trying to get them off and raising the taxes so high that nobody will smoke them, ‘cause that’s unhealthy. And hard liquor; that’s unhealthy, we can’t do that. And salt, man, we’ve got to have salt-free diets, so we have to post the potassium, salt and all the different types of salt … just everything, obesity, overweight, we are so doggone health conscious because we want to live healthy because, among other things, it makes your health care a whole lot cheaper. You live a healthy life, no question it’s a lot cheaper …

Green: Which is typically the excuse for the Federal Government claiming we have the responsibility here, or we have the authority I should say …

Barton: … to tell you how to live a healthy lifestyle. So if I got to the Centers for Disease Control and I’m concerned about health, I find some interesting stats there and this should tell me something about health.

Homosexual/bi-sexual individuals are seven times more likely to contemplate or commit suicide. Oooh, that doesn’t sound very healthy.

Homosexuals die decades earlier than heterosexuals. That doesn’t sound healthy.

Nearly one-half of practicing homosexuals admit to five hundred or more sex partners and nearly one-third admit to a thousand or more sex partners in a lifetime.

Green: Wow.

Barton: That doesn’t sound very healthy.

Homosexuals have an HIV prevalence sixty times higher than the general population.

Homosexuals have Hepatitis B virus five to six times more often and Hepatitis C virus infections about two times more often than the regular population.

Homosexuals are less than three percent of the population but they account for sixty-four percent of the syphilis cases.

I mean, you go through all this stuff, sounds to me like that’s not very healthy. Why don’t we regulate homosexuality?

Green: I was about to say, now wait a minute, they want to either regulate or outlaw things like transfats and all those things you mentioned earlier …

Barton: I got news for you, salt won’t cut decades off your life. But we regulate salt. And transfats are not going to cut decades off your life, but we’ll regulate that.

Green: But here they do the opposite, they promote it.

Barton: Oh wait, this will cut decades off your life? Let’s get this taught in kindergarten and on up … wait a minute, I thought we were into being health conscious? This is so oxymoronic and it really is dangerous.

There is a piece I want to read out of an 1814 legal work on why – and this is without all of the medical evidence back there – but this is why homosexuality was not promoted …

Green: What date did you say there?

Barton: 1814.

Green: A lot of people thing this is an issue that has not been dealt with before. I’ve heard you talk about George Washington dealing with it in the military …

Barton: 1778 … so this is an 1814 legal work on why we didn’t promote homosexuality:

If we reflect on the dreadful consequences of sodomy to a state, and on the extent to which this abominable vice may be secretly carried on and spread, we cannot, on the principles of sound policy, consider the punishment as too severe. For if it once begins to prevail, not only will boys be easily corrupted by adults, but also by other boys; nor will it ever cease; more especially as it must thus soon lose all its shamefulness and infamy and become fashionable and the national taste; and then . . . national weakness, for which all remedies are ineffectual, most inevitably follow; not perhaps in the very first generation, but certainly in the course of the third or fourth. . . . To these evils may be added yet another, viz. that the constitutions of those men who submit to this degradation are, if not always, yet very often, totally destroyed, though in a different way from what is the result of whoredom.

Whoever, therefore, wishes to ruin a nation, has only to get this vice introduced; for it is extremely difficult to extirpate it where it has once taken root because it can be propagated with much more secrecy . . . and when we perceive that it has once got a footing in any country, however powerful and flourishing, we may venture as politicians to predict that the foundation of its future decline is laid and that after some hundred years it will no longer be the same . . . powerful country it is at present.

Green: Wow.

Barton: 1814.

Green: I’ve actually seen you give statistics on what happens in nations that adopt homosexuality and homosexual marriage and how quickly that nation does deteriorate.

Barton: Now this was 1814, but there was a study done back in the 1920s and it looked at eighty-some odd nations and those rejected sexual regulation like with homosexuality, none of them lasted past the third generation from the time that they embraced it. So how ever many it looked at …

Green: … confirmed exactly what that study in 1814 said.

Barton: Exactly, and that’s a century later. And now here the CDC is saying “here’s a really unhealthy lifestyle” and we’re saying “great, let’s promote it in schools and lets protect it in law.”

Green: Unbelievable.

Via Al Mohler we get this fascinating study by Mark A. Smith of the University of Washington in "Political Science Quarterly" entitled "Religion, Divorce, and the Missing Culture War in America" [PDF].

In it, Smith examines why Religious Right groups who spend all of their time talking about family values and the sanctity of marriage seem to give only lip-service, at best, to fighting divorce, despite the fact that it is repeatedly mentioned in the Bible. The Right may mentione it, generally when bemoaning the deteriorating culture, but they invest little to no effort in actually trying to change the laws to make it more difficult to obtain a divorce.

Smith notes that neither Jerry Falwell with his Moral Majority nor Pat Robertson with his Christian Coalition paid much attention to the issue; a trend which continues today with the Family Research Council: 

The FRC regularly sends email alerts to its members and supporters in an attempt to inform, persuade, and reinforce their attitudes and beliefs about matters of interest to the group. In 2006 and 2007, the FRC dispatched hundreds of these, most of which contained three paragraph-length items. Surprisingly for an organization that structures its activities around marriage and the family, only 8 of the 1,366 items centered on divorce. In the context of its total volume of communication with members and supporters, the FRC rarely broached the topic of divorce. The organization has stated that “we will not relent in our insistence to reform divorce laws,” but that abstract support has
not been matched by a sustained commitment to spending time or resources on the issue.

Perhaps the FRCʼs emails do not accurately reflect its priorities, meaning that analyzing a different facet of the groupʼs activities would yield a different answer. Accordingly, it will be useful to examine the messages the FRC expresses when it broadcasts its views through the mass media. As part of a larger strategy to influence both the mass public and political leaders, the FRCʼs staff regularly write editorials and attempt to publish them in leading news outlets. During 2006 and 2007, the staff succeeded in placing editorials on topics falling within the organizationʼs mission, including abstinence programs in schools, gay rights and hate crimes, abortion laws in the states, and judicial activism regarding online pornography. Yet FRC staff also published editorials that criticized wasteful government spending, warned against universal health care, and challenged the science behind global warming. Certainly no one could deny that government spending, health care, and global warming are important subjects for American citizens and political leaders to consider. For an organization whose self-definition holds that it “champions marriage and the family,” however,
these issues are considerably removed from its core mission.

The FRC has stated that constraints of budget, time, and staff prevent it from engaging questions surrounding same-sex marriage and heterosexual divorce at the same time, but it managed to allocate its scarce resources to addressing many other issues of current interest. Even if one could justify on practical or biblical grounds prioritizing gay marriage over divorce, such a view could hardly justify pushing divorce all the way to the bottom of the pecking order, below issues with only a tenuous connection to marriage and the family. Of course, a comprehensive search of all of the FRCʼs communications with members, the media, and government officials from 1983 to the present would probably uncover sporadic advocacy for changing public policy regarding divorce. Such a finding would not undermine the conclusion drawn here, namely that the subject occupies a low spot on the groupʼs priority list. Indeed, in the statement from its Web site quoted above, the FRC conceded that it spends little time on divorce.

Smith notes that FRC's lack of focus on divorce is especially odd given that FRC President Tony Perkins authored the nationʼs first covenant marriage bill back when he was a state legislator in Louisiana. 

But Smith also notes that there is very little chance that FRC or any other Religious Right group is going to "move beyond just saying that they endorse divorce reform and actually turn that abstract support into concrete action" because Americans so widely accept divorce to such an extent that even a significant portion of the Religious Right's base would oppose such efforts:

Needless to say, it is not a winning strategy for mobilization to tell your potential constituents that they have committed immoral acts that you are attempting to restrict through governmental regulations. Without an organized and vocal constituency making positions on divorce a litmus test for political support, it is difficult to imagine how the issue could join the ongoing culture war.