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Originally Posted by Lux
1. There are many different branches of Christianity in the US, and by saying most of them are conservative you leave out certain groups such as the evangelics.
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Yes, to be exact I was mostly referng to the branch of roman catolics, who are the ones bringing the most conservative votes in.
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Originally Posted by Lux
2. Bush disenfranchised many conservatives with his lavish spending on defense and other departments.
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Depends what you consider disenfranchising. From what I know most pastors were very enthusiastic about numerous military actions as well as the prolonging the withdrawl of the troops from Iraq. I'm not sure they were all fundamentaly against lavish spending. That was a given from the get go, by electing a president who did similar things in the past already. IMO
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Originally Posted by Lux
3. If you look back on the history of the US, conservatives only started voting for the republican after one crucial election. was it carter? i am not sure, but it was a very intense campaign and election. it might have been in the 70s.
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Originally Posted by Lux
4. By small oligarchy i hope you mean the less than 1% of all Americans who control over 90% of the wealth. in which case, control has little to do with religion, and more to do with money. which would make the US a plutocracy. you could argue that those who have money ultimately control things by making huge fiscal donations and indirect monies but the fact of the matter is that on ever level of government, the people have a vote in who gets to be in office. the votes are tallied and then whoever is elected, wins. then again, you can argue those who have money are the ones who get to run a campaign to begin with. that is true for all politics and not just the US.
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It's not realy a formal plutocracy, nor is it an oligarchy (at least not a formal one), so I was clearly using that expression in jest. And no... money alone isn't enough. You need a strong base of religious people to get one side of the population, and corporate backing to get the other side of the population which responds to money more. Is this true for all politics? In essence yes, but mostly not in modern western type democracies. Every Euro country lacks an ultra-religious south which the US has in abundance. People who respond to simple, bible-based ideas. It takes those people to make or break an election... along with corporate backing.
Anyway, this is way of topic already. My original point was... Vatican is in need of some serious modifications. These gray old men, trying to justify their homophobic views with dubious 2 thousand year old verses are looking increasingly ridiculous.