Reverend Obama, continued.

Consider the connotations of the modern "Mega-church": most consumers in the Thanatopolis most likely think of white-trash baptists, biblethumpers who deny Darwinian evolution, televangelists, beerdrinking, hellraising capitalists, GOP hawks who thought Nixon "soft", Annie Coulter fans, etc. Most humans would assume the megachurches thus write big tax-deductible checks to their favorite biblethumping Republican politician, when the Bingo Parlor opens election cycle kicks in. Think again. Religious organizations and clergy-peoples now donate a greater quantity of their tax-free shekels to Democrats than they do to GOP candidates (this started with the campaign of that good xtian Bill Clinton in early 90's). Indeed the leading religious fundraiser in the 2008 Prez race is not a GOPer, but Barack Obama, who outdistances 2nd place Mitt Moroni in terms of moneys accepted from religious organizations by a rather substantial margin (BO also outdistances all except Dame Clinton in terms of corporate fundraising: Hill and BO's war-chests are nearing $90 million each---while a Huckabee has not quite cracked $3 million (google 'er (btw Google execs approve of ObamaCorp. too--as do those great progressives Melinda and her wife Billy Gates).

Rev. Obama's appeal to the pious extends beyond simply taking their tithing change, however (in fairness, it might be noted that clergy-bucks hardly match up with, say, donations to candidates from oil executives). As noted in previous posts, BO in fact campaigned recently on a "40 days of Faith and Family" platform, not so different in spirit and substance from a bonehead baptist tent-revival meeting (readers of Contingencies in the El Lay area who were targeted by Bethel AME/Obama spam know what we be representin' about here) Obama also attends a church which distributes creationist pamphlets (see Hitchens' recent interesting anti-Obama essay here). Additionally, BO has on occasion made some slightly peculiar comments in regards to the separation clause of the 1st Amendment.

Obama, given the support he has received from corporate and religious organizations, appears as likely to gain the conservative nomination as does Dame Clinton.