As with a tsunami, the early warning systems were there if people had just read them. Back in 1991, Clarkson reported on his experience at a Christian Coalition Road to Victory gathering – a pep rally combined with nuts and bolts political organizing seminars held before national elections. “Believe!” Clarkson warned us in 1992:

[Christian Coalition] is certain to make 1992 much more interesting, and disturbing, than the conventional wisdom is ready to believe. Believe.

Clarkson’s articles, written between 1991-1994, can be found on the TheocracyWatch website.

When Clarkson told us to “believe,” he was writing about the elections of 1992. Could he possibly have anticipated the coup of 1994? Even today, do journalists understand what happened in 1994? The Republican Party won majorities in both Houses of Congress for the first time in forty years. I regularly read about Newt Gingrich’s contract with America as the main force behind that event, or disaffection with the Democrats. Rarely do I read about the pivotal role of the Christian Coalition.

Today the Christian Coalition, described as a “sinking ship,” suffers from severe financial and morale problems. But the candidates it got elected to Congress are still running the show. At its zenith, the Coalition, founded by Pat Robertson in 1989, actually made the cover of Time magazine Time credited the Christian Coalition with roughly half of all the Republican victories in 1994. Ralph Reed, the Coalition’s former executive director, is featured as “The Right Hand of God.” :

From the Mouths of Babes

San Antonio, Texas: The GOP Becomes A Religious Cult

"The Grand Old Party is more religious cult than political organization" wrote the President of the Alamo City Republican Women's Club in her letter of resignation. The rich Republicans of San Antonio's Bexar County consider themselves very conservative. And they are. But the politics of this new crowd gave them a bad scare. Not long after the Christian rightists staged their coup, the president of the Alamo City Republican Women's club just gave up and quit. "The so-called Christian activists have finally gained control," she explained in her resignation letter, "and the Grand Old Party is more religious cult than political organization." (From Joe Conason's article in Playboy, 1993. [To read the complete article, click here .]

Houston, Texas: Falling through a time warp

One long-time Republican couple told Joan Lowy, a reporter from the Scripps-Howard News Service, "We honest to goodness felt like we had fallen through a time warp into a Nazi brown-shirt meeting,"

In cities and towns across the country, the precinct-by-precinct battle for control of the GOP between mainstream Republicans and conservative Christian activists is going full-tilt. Moderates who were awakened by the Republican National Convention in August to the gains within the party by the Religious Right have begun to organize and fight back. But they have a long way to go. Working at the grassroots, fundamentalist activists have either gained control or made sizable inroads into state party organization in Alaska, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Kansas, Louisiana, Minnesota, North Carolina, South Carolina, Texas, Oregon, Washington and Virginia. A loosely affiliated network of Religious Right organizations led by televangelist Pat Robertson's Christian Coalition has also mobilized millions of evangelical voters across the country. While they failed to re-elect President Bush, those voters helped to elect hundreds of religious activists and Republicans sympathetic to their conservative social agenda to school boards, city councils, state legislatures and Congress. More than a dozen county meetings to elect party officers in Washington state erupted into shouting matches in recent weeks as mainstream Republicans and religious activists battled for control. Last summer, the GOP state convention under the control of religious activists passed a party platform denouncing witchcraft and yoga, among other subjects. (To read Joan Lowy's full article, click here.)

These articles and more, written between 1991-1994, can be found on the TheocracyWatch website.

Where were you between 1991 and 1994? Were you among the somnambulant masses or one of the few whose eyes were wide open? Please use the comment section below to take credit and claim your rightful place in this troubling history.

Coming next - Methodology: nuts and bolts of taking over the party.



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[ed: Joan Bokaer's four part series is:

The Woman in A Mink Coat,

While We Were Sleeping,

Angels on A Pinhead

Under Cover Of Night]