The religious right in the US are 'getting the vapors' not over Hillary's probable candidacy, but over the GOP's, specifically the twice-divorced frontrunner Giuliani (it is the number of marriages -a second marriage may be "the triumph of hope over experience" but a third shows a lack of seriousness).

There only a few solutions to the religious rights' plight, none of them very realistic or attractive. One, is that Rudy undergo a 'religious awakening', not the 'rudy awakening' he gave New Yorkers, and declare that he will do more than merely appoint 'constuctionist judges'.

Two, as Thompson is beginning to look hopeless and as Huckabee is too far back, the religious right could back Ronmey, if he is the GOP candidate to topple Giuliani, but as a practising Mormon he is about as close to being a strict Evangelist as a Unitarian or even Muslim. The trinity is sacrosanct in the Evangelical theolgy."Mormonism is not a Trinitarian Christian faith" says Richard Land, a leading evangelical.

That leaves #three, and what seems the most likely; field a third party independent candiate. This is the strategy that the aforementioned Richard Land, who serves as president of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission is threatening to employ.'This is not a bluff' he declared in a 'Newsweek' interview.

Steve Benen of the 'Carpetbagger Report' has been following this scenario Religious right leaders to meet again on third-party plans And that was just before the 'Voter Values' Conference 5,775 straw poll, in which Romney narrowly won with 27.6% of the vote and Giuliani came 8th, receiving less than 2% of the vote.

Benen again."it's worth noting that as religious right players go, Land is very much an insider-y, establishment kind of guy. And to hear him tell it, the religious right really will bolt if Giuliani gets the nod".

A new LAT/Bloomberg poll,released this morning, found that "about one-third of GOP voters said they would consider supporting a third-party candidate in the general election, if the party nominee supported abortion and gay rights".

As part of the 'Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week', a man who conceivably could be on the ticket for that third party, Rick Santorum, a Penn State alumnus and two-term senator and once possible Republican presidential candidate said at University Park, Pennsylvania that "lslam, unlike Christianity is not just something you do on Sunday. ... We (as Americans) don't get that."

Maybe Santorum has hit on a new slogan for the new religious right independent party " Just something you do on Sunday"... I like it. It would rationalize away, at the same time, many of the scandals that have plagued their leadership.