Now that John McCain has rescinded endorsements he previously exhorted from John Hagee and Rod Parsley a question emerges.

One of the big incentives along with holding the religious right voting bloc intact, hoping he will get the same kind of boost from it that George W. Bush had previously, was the financial clout that such big buck televangelists bring to a presidential campaign.

We learn about the forbearance that McCain and other rightist Republicans displayed toward Texan Hagee and Ohioan Parsley.  

Even after Hagee had revealed that New Orleans received the tragic jolt of Hurricane Katrina because the city was slated to stage a gay pride parade and that Catholicism represented the great whore, he continued to be defended by McCain and Texas U.S. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison.

As Sean Hannity and others make clear, the Republicans would like to toss all the real issues away and run against Barack Obama's former pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright.

One point needs to be abundantly clear to Hannity and all the other right wing propagandists exploiting the "Wright issue."  These well paid zealots harp on an extreme compilation of over 30 years of Wright sermons into a 10 to 15 second sound bite.  Even they needed to be taken out of context to deliver the intended resounding message.

It is necessary to take nothing out of context to analyze the McCain spiritual advisers that he continues to retain in his ranks.  John Hagee calls Catholicism "the great whore" and asserts that New Orleans residents had been punished by God for having scheduled a gay pride parade.  He looks forward to what he sees as a God-ordained nuclear war known to the reverend and his followers as "rapture."

Reverend Rod Parsley of Columbus, Ohio is another McCain spiritual adviser who speaks in harsh, raging tones of doctrinal self-righteousness.  Parsley fashions himself as something of an historian as well as he informs listeners blisteringly that "one of the reasons" why America was created was to "destroy Islam."  

Good research reports are invaluable when studying the religious right and figuring out what to do about it. So it is worth highlighting the good ones when they appear. Last week, the People For the American Way Foundation, the NAACP, and the African American Ministers Leadership Council released a report, The Patriot Pastors' Electoral War Against the `Hordes of Hell' that, according to the press release, "documents how this new generation of Religious Right leaders is turning churches into political machines for far-right Republican candidates."  

This is the best single overview to date, summarizing the role of the Patriot Pastors in Ohio and the nationwide movement for which it is serving as a pilot project. Everyone concerned should read it carefully, and take it seriously as the new wave of the religious right organizes for this year's elections and beyond.

Highlights on the flip:

The religious right has been a rising force in Ohio politics for many years. But an anti-gay marriage ballot initiative called Issue One in 2004 became the catalyst for a new and renewed religious right movement in the state. Rev. Rod Parsley's organization Reformation Ohio, and Rev. Russell Johnson's Ohio Restoration Project are both dedicated to mobilizing voters this year, and for the foreseeable future. They are particularly focused on electing Ken Blackwell, the current GOP candidate for governor.

While polls currently show Blackwell well-behind in the governor's race, three months is an eternity in politics. But even if Blackwell loses (after all, it does appear to be a strong Democratic year), the religious right can win, even in losing. Barry Goldwater's losing campaign for president in 1964 is credited with galvanizing the modern conservative movement. And Pat Robertson's earlier organization, the Freedom Council provided a base for his unsuccessful effort to get the 1988 GOP nomination for president, which in turn, provided the foundation for what became the Christian Coalition. In order to be viable, a movement's fortunes must not depend on the fortunes of one candidate for office. But there is a strong relationship between movements and electoral politics, and whether or not Blackwell wins,the religious right in Ohio will be stronger in the wake of 2006.

It's time to get to know the leaders of the religious right in Ohio.

Joan Bokaer, over at Talk to Action writes:

I believe Ted Haggard, President of the National Association of Evangelicals, was sincere when he told Tom Brokaw, "There's no one that's leading the mega-church movement or involved in the mega-church movement that is in favor of a theocracy. None of us are for that. We're all defenders of freedom and liberty for all."