In the interminable navel gazing, endless race that is the next presidential election in the US - I have found someone who is thinking what I’m thinking.

Pastor Dan at Street Prophets. My thinking has been just a hunch, not based on anything solid, he starts connecting dots.

My suspicions started awhile back, floated to the front of my mind over a week ago when I read Joe Carter from The Evangelical Outpost had set up Blogs for Fred. (Fred Thompson, a former senator and actor who hasn’t officially declared he is going to run yet)

See, I don’t think anyone from The Family Research Council does anything on their own, this organization is a disciplined, serious agenda driven group of beltway workers. But I asked.

Is this your initiative or is it tied in with your job at the FRC? I didn’t see a disclaimer.

I did see a FRC co-worker is doing it with you.

Joe answered.

It’s an initiative by me and my buddy Jared. We thought about including a disclaimer but doing so would require mentioning where we work. Technically, we aren’t really suppossed to mention FRC since that might give people the impression that they have something to do with the project.

Technically, while I don’t have to believe Joe because he is free to cheer for whomever he wants to as a citizen of the United States; I was and still am sceptical.  Carter and Bridges proudly and loyally work for a Dobson organization and the Dobson machine will use whomever they chose, including their employees, wittingly or unwittingly.  And as this drags on and deadlines loom, the field narrows and the moves have to be made.

Many evangelicals in the US are not able to vote Democrat, it is a personal moral impossibility and utterly unchristian to them.
While many of these righteous Republicans can come right out an say they would not vote before they vote for a Yankee Mormon, leadership has to be far more nuanced.

Back to Pastor Dan. It’s summer, the blogosphere is slow, political theories are crunchy and go down cool. He picks up an AP piece that was news a couple of months ago, but one that has been resurrected and has cut and past from Focus on the Family and the obligatory quotes from FRC President Tony Perkins.

Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney is on the board of Marriott hotels, which pipes in copious numbers of TV pr0n channels to it’s chain. That’s not news. That AP would resurrect it, and use material from Focus on the Families Citizen Link and quotes from Tony Perkins is.

As for the angles: the obvious one is that the Religious Right has decided to stick a shiv in Romney’s campaign. People like Phil Burress and Tony Perkins don’t have a spontaneous bone in their bodies. Somebody chose to do him dirt.

Why is a bit murkier. They might be afraid of Romney’s cash and good looks, or they might distrust his Mormonism or his born-again conservatism. It might be even simpler than that. It could be that that they’re plumping for another candidate, or that they’re using this as a convenient lever to push the anti-porn campaign. (See here for dark speculation that this is part of a coordinated campaign to dump Mitt in favor of Fred Thompson. If Dobson apologizes for questioning Fred’s Christianity, we’ll know the theory’s a winner.)

Whatever the cause, it’s remarkable that the AP’s Johnson gives the criticism so much ink. I actually had to stop at the end of the article and remind myself that this wasn’t a press release from Focus on the Family. Except it was - pieces of it, anyway. Other portions seem to be a rewrite of a post by David Brody.

IT’S a bit of a mystery why this story is coming out now, as it’s been floating around since June or so. I suppose back in June, the only Thompson in the race was a Catholic dogged by rumors of infidelity. Now that we might have a fake prosecutor join the real (cross-dressing) one, it might be time for Dobson and his pals to make their move.

It’s a bigger mystery why Johnson would choose to carry this kind of water for these people. It’s one thing to round up the scuttlebutt for reader’s consideration. It’s quite another to pass it on without a shred of analysis. What’s his angle?

Hmmm. Nice to know I’m not the only one with a raised eyebrow, even nicer to know this isn’t my political turf and I’ll get to sit back and watch what dots get connected.

Hugh Hewitt, a Republican who works for Salem Media, came out early with a book pushing Romney and attempting to convince his fellow conservative evangelicals they aren’t electing a theologian in chief. His blog has been pushing his book almost 24/7 and it just hasn’t picked up steam with the self-identified religious right. Even with friends and fellows who agree with him on agendas. They have been rather quiet.

Dan at Street Prophets goes on to lay down some clear reasons why he is thinking what he is thinking. If there are more dots to connect, they may start showing up in the blogroll at Blogs for Fred.