Well, you missed one other difference–Bryan, as a Christian who had actually read the entire Bible and hadn’t been brainwashed by the theo-politics of the Moral Majority and its heirs, was pretty damn liberal. He might look conservative to our eyes because of his Biblical positions on a handful of social issues that serve as ceremonial footballs in our political system (and to give due discredit, he was also a prohibitionist and a racist), but he was anti-war, anti-imperialist, populist to the core and extremely critical of big business. A modern Bryan would look something like a cross between Brownback and Kucinich, and if he were running for president in 2008 you probably would never have heard for him–I can only imagine the media blackout we’d see on a serious presidential candidate with a reputation for trust-busting.

Serves ‘em right.

I know there are plenty of others, but I always think about Williams Jennings Bryan who today we know as the “winner” in the Scopes monkey trial, but for the past 20 years, he ran as a populist Democratic candidate endorsed by the party, endorsed by the people, opposing Darwinism and opposing gold for silver.

If Williams Jennings Bryan were alive today he would win the presidency, instead of losing it. The sunbelt states that he dominated back then he would dominate today. And just like back in 1896, the corporate interests would do everything in their power to destroy him, just as the republican corporate machine is trying its best to destroy huckabee. Williams Jennings Bryan used his religion to club the republicans to claim christianity as being owned by the Democratic party.

Seriously how much has changed in 115 years? Except of course, the Fundie club now is Republican. And they are winning instead of losing. And we have computers. That’s about it.

I agree that the “magic underwear” thing is ridiculous . . . but is it any more ridiculous than the beliefs and tenets of any other major religion?

For my money, all religions are jam-packed with similar silliness. You can have the lot of them.

Conservatives have become impossible to satire. Even the most extreme comments that any outsider can imagine soon become routine dogma of the Conservative movement.

For example Conservatives now routinely quote the fictional Congressional testimony from the fictional TV series “24″ as though it actually happened.

Evangelical Christians commonly refer to events in the “Left Behind” fictional works when justifying heir political and religious beliefs.

William F. Buckley “rehabilitated” the image of Joe McCarthy by writing a work of fiction (”Redhunter”) and including fictional discussions and events that made Senator mcCarthy look more positive: And Conservatives accepted the work as truth.

When individuals can no longer discern between fantasy and reality, and treat them interchangable, they are usually referred to as schizophrenic. In the United States we now refer to them as “Conservatives”.

The fact that these religious people now found in their party actually (well, many of them, anyway) *believe* at a basic level in these campaigns, was always going to come as something of a shock.

Campaigns, morals and rhetoric for the non-religious wing of the Republican Party are something done to discredit opponents and advance their actual agenda, which they generally don’t talk a lot about.