The religious right is in a dismal state at the moment. In 2004 social conservatives marched in lockstep behind a triumphant Republican Party. But two years later they lost a succession of high-profile races and ballot initiatives. And today they are desperately casting about for a like-minded presidential candidate. Mr Giuliani is too liberal, Mr Romney is too much of a flip-flopper, Mr McCain is too independent-minded, particularly on stem-cell research and a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. A recent meeting of the Council for National Policy, a secretive group of social conservatives, was reportedly a study in despair.

Mr Dobson is at the heart of his movement's difficulties, just as he used to epitomise its success. He owed much of his unique influence to the idea that he was a reluctant politician. He built his career offering advice on family problems (his radio show still gets over 6m listeners a week). He refused to run for political office--unlike Messrs Reed and Robertson--and even refused to endorse a presidential candidate until 2004. His insistence on saving America's problems one soul at a time had the paradoxical effect of giving his rare ventures into politics great force.

But since stepping down as head of Focus on the Family in 2003, he has been spendthrift with the political capital he took so long accumulating. He stomped the country for social conservatives in 2004--and devoted a fearsome amount of effort to unseating Mr Daschle. He repeatedly threatened the Republican establishment with severe punishment if it failed to "deliver" for the people who put the party back in power in 2004. Why was George Bush spending so much time trying to reform Social Security, he thundered, when he should have been trying to repair the country's morals?

The problem is that Mr Dobson is not all that good at politics. He displays all the characteristic weaknesses of evangelical politicos--overreaching hopelessly and then blaming failure on want of political courage. He was the prime force behind both the fight to keep Terri Schiavo's feeding tube in place and the push for a gay-marriage ban. But a majority of evangelicals disapproved of the first and a large number of his fellow social conservatives warned, rightly, that the second was a waste of effort.

There have been other miscalculations. He wasted political capital supporting Harriet Miers's doomed nomination to the Supreme Court. He strongly opposed the 2006 Evangelical Climate Initiative. He accused SpongeBob SquarePants of participating in a "pro-homosexual video". He argued that "The Da Vinci Code" "has all the evidence of something cooked up in the fires of hell" (wouldn't it have been better written if it had been?). He compared Bill Frist's call for increased federal funding for stem-cell research to Nazi experiments.

The 70-year-old Mr Dobson (who has already suffered a heart attack and a stroke) is increasingly looking like a relic of an ancien régime rather than a harbinger of a new order. The average age of people on Focus's mailing list is 52. Mr Dobson and his acolytes are rapidly being displaced by what Mr Gilgoff calls a New New Right--people who are concerned about international justice and climate change as well as abortion and gay marriage, and people who are willing to work with liberal pressure groups over issues such as Sudan and sex slavery.

All this suggests that the battle for the "values voters" will be more complicated than it was in 2004--and certainly will involve a lot more than kissing Mr Dobson's ring. In the Republican "evangelical primary" rising stars like Rick Warren, another reluctant politician, may count for as much as the old war horses. And Democrats such as Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama--who both like to stress their religious credentials--have a chance of picking up disillusioned evangelicals. The Jesus machine is changing fast.