The faith-based machine that Ronald Reagan inspired and Karl Rove perfected

Howard Fineman writes in Newsweek:

Foley put new cracks in the notion of the GOP as a vessel of family virtue.

Among evangelicals, moral revulsion will yield electoral consequences: fewer and less eager volunteers, a lower turnout, especially if the hunkered-down House leadership is found to be covering up.

So the polls show. A Pew Foundation survey found an 8-percentage-point drop in Republican preference among "frequent churchgoers."

Long before the Foley e-mails surfaced, the gears were grinding in the faith-based machine that Ronald Reagan inspired and Karl Rove perfected. It has been 30 years since evangelical, "Bible-believing" Christians flocked into politics. Figures such as James Dobson of Focus on the Family and Charles Colson of the Prison Fellowship have enormous clout within the GOP; Rove is a phone pal of both. But a younger crop of grass-roots activists views the elders of the cultural right as accommodationists who have failed to press a social agenda aggressively, and who now balk at calling for the ouster of Speaker Denny Hastert. "They need to wake up!" said Jamie Johnson, a religious broadcaster in Iowa. "Heads have to roll! The older generation is satisfied with a seat at the table. We want to build a whole new table."

Some evangelicals want to broaden the movement's agenda—in ways that don't necessarily help the GOP cause. They still care about abortion and traditional marriage, of course, but are equally concerned about immigration (they want strict limits), federal spending (they view it as wildly out of control) and the war in Iraq (about which they are increasingly ambivalent). "We don't want to deal with 'hot button' issues only," said Hunter, who recently took command of the Christian Coalition, which, though enfeebled, still claims a mailing list of 2.5 million.