They're sharpening their cleavers and their knives

Poor Barack Obama can't win for losing. 

You may remember this summer when Obama's appearance at Jim Wallis' Call to Renewal conference left many liberals uneasy.  Now, evangelical megastar Rick Warren has invited him to speak at his conference on HIV/AIDS this week, and, in what may be a preview of 2008, he's got the fundamentalists up in arms. 

Barack Obama is likely to run for president in 2008, and speaking from the pulpit of one of America's most well-known evangelical churches is likely to be footage that could be used over and over in trying to dissuade Christians from thinking about moral issues that real Christians truly value.

And what are these "moral issues" that "real Christians truly value?" Well, there's no need for the plural. 

The Religious Right presently is in dire straights.  Not only did they suffer a heavy defeat this month (with the rest of the Republicans) but they have no clear presidential choice set up in 2008 to take the place of their fallen angel George Bush.  The three favorites at this early junction for the Republican nomination are Mitt Romney, Rudy Guliani and John McCain; none of whom are cozy with Christian conservatives. Romney is a Mormon.  Guliani is prochoice, pro-civil unions and has personal baggage the fundies don't approve of.  And while McCain has been snuggling up lately, we all remember who rammed him off the trail in 2000. 

Should Obama win the Democratic nomination--which I don't think he will--we could well have an unusual scenario in which the Dem nominee is more comfortable with religious language than the Republican.  This, as pastordan astutely points out, scares the everloving daylights out of the fundie braintrust, who can't afford to let even a fraction of their congregation be wooed to the dark side (this takes on a whole new meaning when Obama is the person involved...).

But these guys, the archbishops of right-wing Christianity, are not the kind of people who are going to risk losing an election to take a principled stand for what they claim to believe in.  Their satisfaction comes from the illusion of being the engine driving the GOP machine, regardless of who's behind the wheel.  They drive him to the White House, then demand to have their wheels greased believing it was they solely responsible for bringing him there (even though they were never a threat to shut down or go elsewhere.) 

So they don't care who the GOP nominates; it just makes their job occasionally more difficult.  They are already warming up the band for Obama; dragging out the old gruesome abortion rhetoric, trying to turn as much of the flock into single-issue voters as possible, and keep the focus off Mitt or Rudy.