In 1991 I worked as a doorman at one of the few upscale condo buildings in Ann Arbor, Michigan. I’d graduated a couple of years earlier and was spinning aimlessly before eventually settling on graduate school. Three times a week I’d suit up in my tan polyester uniform and collect minimum wage; Midwesterners didn’t tip for shit back then. But it was enough to get by, sharing a house with four other people and paying $135/month in rent.
On the ten-hour Monday and Friday day shifts (no lunch, no overtime), I’d hustle about endlessly, opening doors and managing the perpetually overcrowded parking lot that had just two guest spots. But the Wednesday night shift was another story. It was oh so-quiet, and I got to do a lot of reading and writing.
It was during a few of those Wednesday nights that I read Hunter Thompson’s Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail. I’d devoured the original Fear and Loathing a year earlier and nearly pissed my pants. This sequel-in-name-only was much longer and less humorous than Thompson’s notorious Vegas escapades, but it was also pure gonzo journalism: a narrative of his time on the Republican and Democratic campaign trails in 1972, when South Dakota’s George McGovern managed to beat the odds and capture the Democratic nomination, only to get trounced by incumbent Richard Nixon in the general election.
Aside from the rollicking exaggerations and outright fictions, some of Thompson’s serious political analyses were actually quite interesting. One of the things he was quite prescient about back in 1972, was pointing out how Nixon opened the Republican Party’s doors to Christian conservatives. Yup, it began forty years ago.
Forever paranoid and desperate despite his massive lead in the polls, Tricky Dick courted America’s evangelicals and fundamentalists, many of whom had previously been apolitical. Nixon himself had been raised a Quaker and had no use for their fundamentalist theology, 
Ronald Reagan eagerly followed in Nixon’s footsteps, courting the religious right somewhat disingenuously, and tallying their votes while actually giving them little more than lip service. They came-a-runnin’, as did many Americans who were drawn to Reagan’s Hollywood charm.
Connecticut blue blood and mainline Episcopalian George Bush, Sr. had little patience for Christian fundamentalists. Actually, he didn’t care much for Reagan’s laughable Laffer economics or ham-fisted hawkishness either. But after gaining the White House by hitching his wagon to The Gipper, Bush had to take the now-ensconced fundamentalists with it. They never really liked him either, and that was one of the many factors that cost him re-election in 1992.
Of course George Bush, Jr. actually is a fundamentalist Christian, having famously converted at Laura’s behest to her evangelical United Methodist Church in 1977. So in 2000, Christian conservatives got to party like it was 1999 as they finally had one of their own in the White House.
And so a dozen years later, what we’re now seeing now is just the next logical step: A cavalcade of would-be Republican presidential nominees stepping over each other to court the religious right. Each one tries to outdo the next by pledging their allegiance to Jesus and vowing to end abortion, contraception, evolution, immigration, and the annoying secular principles upon which our republic was founded.
It’s an absurdist sideshow starring a Hairbot, a Newt, an old scamp of a country doctor, and a frothy pool of Santorum. And let’s not forget the opening act: Pizza Man, Shrub II, and Bachmann Bullshit Overdrive. Oh, and the Rational One, Jon Hunts
So which one of these far right courtiers will eventually get the nod? Yeah, whatever. In the next post, I’ll talk about why it just doesn’t matter all that much.