Trolling the marks

The Carpetbagger makes an overlooked point about James Dobson's threat to take out six Democratic Senators:

Let me get this straight. A right-wing evangelical leader is suggesting that he'll get other right-wing evangelicals to vote against Democratic candidates in 2006 unless they side with the Republicans? Maybe I'm confused, but aren't right-wing evangelicals going to vote against them anyway?

This sounds far more like a publicity stunt for Dobson to raise some money and less like a meaningful campaign development.

This is not to say that Dobson couldn't bring down these Senators. But the Carpetbagger is right that this kind of rhetoric from the hotheads of the religious right is as much about raising money from followers than anything else. Oregonians had a lot of experience with this from our years of dealing with Lon Mabon and the Oregon Citizens Alliance.

The thing to remember about people like Dobson is that, first and foremost, they are direct descendents of the carnival tent revivalists who made their livings off the well meaning donations off the rubes.