Let's look at the relationship between the GOP and the Religious Right through the eyes of two prominent but very different Republicans: the former GOP Senator John Danforth and political strategist Paul Weyrich. Danforth, an Episcopal Priest, was Senator from Missouri and served as President Bush's ambassador to the United Nations until he resigned in January, 2004. Weyrich was instrumental in bringing leaders of  fundamentalist, Pentecostal, and charismatic churches into the GOP.

First John Danforth:

BY a series of recent initiatives, Republicans have transformed our party into the political arm of conservative Christians...

The problem is not with people or churches that are politically active. It is with a party that has gone so far in adopting a sectarian agenda that it has become the political extension of a religious movement.

Paul Weyrich's angry and revealing response to Danforth:

Do you want to return to the way it was before the religious right became part of the GOP coalition? If that happens, the Republican Party will be dead. Its majorities in both the House and Senate soon would evaporate and the party would be unable to elect a President, as in 1976, when Gerald Ford was defeated. Those who want to return to that era are welcome. I prefer victory.