This article argues that conservative evangelicals are unlikely to desert the GOP because of the hostility of the Democrats toward religious believers:

The Democratic party elites cheer when regulators force Catholic charities to fund things the church considers immoral. They vote to curtail the freedom of conscience of pro-life pharmacists. They filibuster judicial appointees who do not hold to the interpretation of Ted Kennedy, senator, of the constitution-as-rubber-stamp for liberal causes. Worse, they compare religious rightists to Muslim terrorists (“Christianists”) and warn that we have entered a new Dark Age. Garry Wills, the popular historian, called the 2004 election the end of the Enlightenment on American soil, and meant it.

The good folks who make up the religious right may not love the Republican party, but they know a threat when they see one. The modern Democratic party is hostile to their very existence. An embarrassment for the Deanified Democrats in the November mid-term elections would be a victory not for theocracy, but for enlightened self-interest.

I think this is right to a ceratin extent. I wrote quite a bit about the great liberal flip out in the aftermath of the 2004 election (see the November and December 2004 archives if you’re interested). And yet, while I certainly have my differences with the Democratic Party, I think there are good reasons to hope for Democrats to make gains this fall.

One problem is that so many people vote based on what the parties say they’re going to do or, even worse, what the voter thinks the parties would really like to do in their heart of hearts if they got the chance. What’s needed instead is a sense of what the parties will actually be able to do in office given the political constraints they face.

For me, a vote for Democrats this fall (and possibly in 2008) would be, more than anything else, a vote for a check on the policies of the Bush Administration. The last six years have shown us what this administration will choose to do when virtually unconstrained by Congress. “Preventitive” war, highly questionable detainee policies, domestic spying of dubious constitutional provenance, and a more statist and authoritarian policy generally have been the result. In 2006 we’re talking at most about the Democrats increasing their ability to act as some kind of check on the administration, not the ability to implement some alleged secular humanist dream platform.

Apparently, though, many conservative Christian supporters of the Bush Administration don’t share my evaluation of its policies, which is fair enough. But, if we’re going to appeal to “enlightened self-interest” maybe they should consider that, sooner or later, the Democrats are bound to regain power. And if they are as implacably hostile to faith as they’re made out to be, would you, as a conservative Christian, want them to be wielding the expansive powers that have been claimed by the Bush administration?