Lisa, I hope (of course) that you are right that the transformation of the GOP into a “Christian Democratic” party on European lines is not going to happen, but I’m not convinced. There are a lot of reasons for this, not least the way that the politics of a portion of the Evangelical base appears (and I’d stress that ‘appears’) to be evolving. We could go into this in due course and at horrifying length, but for now, let’s look briefly at something else you raised, the reasons for the 2006 defeat. Contrary to your view, I don’t see that vote as a rejection of ‘compassionate conservatism,’ It was, I reckon, rather a proxy rejection of the President (basically for reasons revolving around, to use a shorthand term, ’competence’) as well as a protest at the way that the GOP was running the Congress. So far as the latter was concerned, the issue was not so much what they were spending as how (and why)they were spending, and, of course, how they were funding it.