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Stealth was crucial for several reasons: The Christian Coalition was endangering its tax-exempt status by acting as an appendage of the Republican Party; the coalition's organizers didn't want their opponents to gain knowledge of their tactics; and they were saying things about their movement that they definitely didn't want to see in print.

At one of those closed meetings, Guy Rodgers delivered a speech to coalition activists that exposed what is still a critical weakness of the religious right. As he explained with a smirk, they relied upon mobilizing a relatively small group of sympathetic voters in elections that most Americans simply ignore.

Joe Conason Joe Conason's column appears in Salon News every other Tuesday. + Biography + Archives

"In a presidential election, when more voters turn out than in any other election, only 15 percent of eligible voters actually determine the outcome. How can that be? Well, of all the adults 18 and over eligible to vote, only about 60 percent are registered ... Of those registered to vote, in a good turnout, only half go to the polls. That means 30 percent of those eligible are actually voting. So 15 percent determines the outcome in a high-turnout election. In low-turnout elections ... the percentage that determines who wins can be as low as 6 or 7 percent."

Although Rodgers didn't mention presidential primaries, those contests too often attract only a fraction of eligible and registered citizens. "Is this sinking in?" he asked. "We don't have to persuade a majority of Americans to agree with us." Most of them, he said, stay home and watch television.

There's another side to that same scheme, however. When that passive American majority perceives the religious right as a threat to its own sovereignty -- as happened during the impeachment struggle in 1998 and 1999 -- the movement's power shrivels. That was why they lost the culture war for which they had been spoiling from the moment that Bill Clinton was inaugurated.

And that is also why McCain, who voted to impeach the president and agrees with Robertson on almost every issue of consequence, now sees that his only chance to prosper is by defeating them again.
salon.com | Feb. 29, 2000

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