The recent US election was a redemptive election. At a time that many throughout the world had written off the American electorate as lifeless putty in the hands of Karl Rove, it woke up to deliver the Republican Party its worse blow in the last quarter of a century. Not only independents and centrists voted to repudiate Republican candidates, but a third of evangelicals-Bush’s fundamentalist Christian base-voted for Democrats.
One of those pleasantly surprised was this writer, who in the aftermath of the 2004 presidential elections, predicted that the Republicans would rule for the next quarter century owing to the formidable grassroots machinery that they had forged-a "juggernaut" that was anchored by a fundamentalist base in the so-called "red states."