Q: Which does a Rockefeller Republican relish more: Winning elections or persecuting Christians?

A: Ask them after the next pogrom.

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John McCain was not supposed to win New Hampshire. But he did.

John McCain was not supposed to lose South Carolina. But he did.

And what he did afterwards was the beginning of the end for his faux "insurgency."

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McCain's concession statement resembled his past statements on the Senate floor and in the Senate Republican conference: sanctimonious and self-righteous, unmistakable anger not concealed by his carefully modulated voice. Not since Bob Dole in the wake of his 1988 New Hampshire defeat had demanded George Bush the Elder "stop lying about me" had a defeated GOP primary candidate lashed out so intemperately. McCain, in a scripted speech, labeled his victorious opponent as a candidate of "pretense" mouthing "an empty slogan of reform" and practicing "negative conservatism." That made a sham of McCain's claim of having sworn off negative campaigning and shattered the illusion--shared by the candidate himself--that McCain was the forerunner of a broad-based reform movement inside the Republican Party.

Since that dousing of reality was intolerable to him, "Sailor" had to find a scapegoat. And he did in the form of the only group in society that it is politically permissible to hate: evangelical Christians.

Former Senator Warren Rudman of New Hampshire, McCain's national co-chairman (and his designated choice to be attorney general in a McCain administration), immediately belittled the South Carolina returns because religious conservatives comprised 33% of the Republican vote. This despite the fact that Bush won big in virtually every GOP demographic category and with a stronger-than-expected turnout, which was supposed to herald a McCain victory.

But as we now know, John McCain doesn't just get mad; he gets even.

The most reprehensible maneuver of the campaign leading up to the Michigan primary was John McCain's phone message, falsely attributed to a nonexistent organization, implying anti-Catholic bias by George W. Bush. No mere shabby campaign trick, it signified the outbreak of a unilateral religious war inside the Republican Party.

"This is a Catholic voter alert," the caller told voters, without disclosing that he represented the McCain campaign. The voice claimed Bush sought support from anti-Catholic bigots in winning the South Carolina primary, while McCain condemned them. The campaign denied responsibility until the Michigan polls closed, then "sheepishly" acknowledged it. Three days later, the Arizona senator's media-friendly campaign headquarters would not respond to reporters' questions.

While some McCain advisers confidentially expressed their concern about these phone calls, the candidate himself seems without remorse. Apparently deciding no other gambits were left to him, McCain acted recklessly and without regard for his party all for the sake of short-term, and almost certainly temporary, political gain.

Like much in McCain's campaign, waging religious war was not planned but hastily improvised. Nevertheless, it fit a background of the party's biggest money givers bashing the "religious right" and demanding that these interlopers--with their emphasis on abortion--be driven from their own ancestral party. Bush has tried to unite Christians and the country club, but dry timber inside the GOP could be ignited by one spark.

A spark came Feb. 2 when Bush, badly beaten in New Hampshire, began his South Carolina campaign at fundamentalist Bob Jones University. With polls showing McCain ahead in South Carolina, Bush relied on local managers: former Gov. Carroll Campbell and his political lieutenant, Warren Simpkins. Bush's own experts on the Christian vote would have opposed the Bob Jones inaugural but were not consulted.

Insinuations about Bush consorting with anti-Catholic bigots surfaced during the South Carolina campaign and accelerated after Bush won decisively there. The aforementioned Warren Rudman has carried on a long vendetta against the Christian Coalition and recently referred to his anti-abortion critics as "imbeciles." A view Senator McCain seems to heartily share.

Besides the bogus "Catholic voter alert," McCain himself joined the assault. As Michigan voted late that Tuesday, the senator assailed Bob Jones University in radio talk shows - even though he, too, had sought to speak there (he was unable to fit it into his campaign schedule), and his most prominent South Carolina backer, Congressman Lindsey Graham, holds an honorary degree from BJU, and past GOP stalwarts from Ronald Reagan to George Bush the Elder to Bob Dole have all spoken there without being summarily trashed for it as was Bush the Younger. After "Sailor's" victory, he took to vigorous bashing of Robertson in interviews. Subsequently he tossed Jerry Falwell into that mix, for no immediately obvious reason other than sheer spite. And now he can seemingly do nothing else.

The desire to smash Bob Jones and the Christian Coalition implies that religious conservatives will be unwelcome in the Republican Party should the McCainiacs succeed in taking it back for their Rockefeller forebears. The McCain rationale for losing in South Carolina is instructive. Rudman noted that 34% of the state's turnout were self-identified members of the "Christian right" and went 68% for Bush, adding: "Of the remaining two-thirds, John McCain won the election, 52 to 48." But Gallup's national survey for CNN shows 32% identified with the Christian right. Are McCain and Rudman writing off one-third of the Republican coalition?

Yes. Because, like all Rockefelleroids, they absolutely cannot abide the fact that the GOP did not become the majority party until the religious Right entered into it from the grassroots, energized it for the first time in decades, and lifted it to victory.

Facts, as they say, are stubborn things. Prior to the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980 the Republican Party had controlled Congress for four years of the previous forty-eight, and had elected two presidents - one a (bona fide) war hero, the other his veep, and neither perceived as being moderate/liberal. It was hopelessly, haplessly buried in minority status, and seemingly was content with that, living off the crumbs that fell from the ruling liberal Democrat table and otherwise not rocking the boat any more than necessary to get in an afternoon nine holes at the club and partake of a gin & tonic afterwards.

In the twenty years after 1980 the GOP won three of five presidential elections and control the House for six years and the Senate for twelve. The country moved considerably to the Right.

And this was due in large part to the efforts of, yes, the Christian Right. And people like Warren Rudman and John McCain just can't stand it. So much so that they'd rather lose and take the party down with them just for the visceral rush of watching evangelicals - the very lifeblood of the GOP - marched out of it.

Hard to believe, as I wrote at the beginning of this journey, that only five months ago it was Governor Bush who was firing broadsides at the very people who are now his loyalist and most indispensable supporters. How much more ironic that it is the actions of his reckless, unscrupulous, loose-lipped opponent that have positioned W most opportunely to wage a winning campaign in the fall.

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