At the risk of appearing to beat a dead horse, when I've discussed the importance of the evangelical/deeply-religious vote turnout for Bush this past election, I thought I was simply stating a fact. It was a very big factor in the result. But also it's important to point out (as I have) that typically this type of voter focuses on just a few issues (abortion, gays, stem cell) and appears to ignore many other perhaps more important issues.

Tom Tomorrow writes this:

But the most important advantage Republicans have may be their base of support among Christian evangelicals. The task of getting out the vote is made much easier when you have local institutions in place through which to actually reach the vote.
<...>
Democrats used to have a similar base—it was called organized labor.

I've written about this before and it remains an outrage. It's not enough to say that Republicans have an advantage due to locally-based churches that work to "reach the vote" and then compare it to labor unions. There's a huge difference here! Churches are tax-exempt organizations which last time I checked are not allowed to participate in politics and take sides in election races. If that were the case, they are supposed to lose their tax-exempt status. I do not believe labor unions fall under the same legal constraint.

Of course, if shoe was on the other foot and ministers and preachers were voicing support for Democrats, we'd hear the Republicans scream bloody murder about this obvious wrong doing. But instead, Rush, Hannity, O'Reilly -- the whole lot of them -- not a peep.