A strong turnout for Huckabee, and indeed, a strong Hagee-induced turnout for McCain, will bode well for the religious right challenger to the pro-science, pro-sensible public education incumbent.

Time magazine is belatedly reporting on the stakes in the current issue.

For over two decades, the 15-member elected board has been torn between two factions: in recent years a coalition of five Democrats and three moderate Republicans has managed to hold off efforts by the seven socially conservative Republicans to influence the board's mission.

But while Huckabee may no longer be in a position to sway the outcome of the Republican presidential primary/caucus on Tuesday, he does stand to have a profound impact on another crucial, and potentially more controversial, vote that same day.

Next year the Texas State Board of Education will be writing the science curriculum standards for Texas public schoolchildren, and Huckabee may bring enough conservative fundamentalist voters to the polls on March 4 to swing the balance of power on the board to the supporters of creationism. "If Huckabee marshals the religious right in Texas, particularly in North Texas, it has profound implications for the state board," says Kathy Miller, executive director of the Texas Freedom Network (TFN), an Austin-based advocacy group whose stated goal is to "counter the religious right" in public policy issues, particularly education.

Huckabee has focused his Texas campaign on rousing his evangelical core constituency in the Texas Bible Belt -- conservative towns like Tyler in east Texas; Waco, home to Baylor University; Plano, a conservative, affluent Dallas-area community; and Fort Worth, where Huckabee attended the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in the 1970s. It is his efforts in Fort Worth that concern advocates like Miller; there SBOE District 11 member Pat Hardy, a former schoolteacher, curriculum adviser and moderate Republican, is facing a challenge from fellow Republican Barney Maddox, a urologist and ardent supporter of creationism. With no Democratic candidate on the ballot, Tuesday's winner will take a seat on the contentious 15-member board. Maddox, who declines media interview requests, has posted his writings on the web at sites like the Institute for Creation Research and has called Charles Darwin's work "pre-Civil War fairy tales."

Given the Lone Star state's influence as the second largest purchaser of textbooks nationally, any changes likely would have had a ripple effect across the country. Miller says she is concerned that if the social conservatives gain the upper hand they may try to reassert that influence by drawing up a conservative curriculum that would necessarily have to be addressed in textbooks. "One vote, one member, could be the difference between kids getting a 21st century science education or a 19th century education," Miller said.

So there we are. The religious right that is said by pundits who really ought to know better to be dead; declining; or whose "era" is allegedly over may very well play an outsized role in the development of not only the curriculum of the public schools in Texas, but the content of textbooks nationwide.

The simple fact is this: The religious right will be a major factor in politics in America for the lives of everyone reading this post. It will change over time, and have ups and downs,  like everything else.  But all of the evidence shows a vibrant movement that has not died, but institutionalized. But which continues to show plenty of political and electoral oomph, even as the movement reinvents itself as the founding generation of leaders passes from the scene.

The reason things get so far as the situtation with the Texas State Board of Education, is that too many of us fail to pay attention to what is actually going on the religious right in time to effectively intervene.  This tendency is exaccerbated by pundits who argue that the religious right is somehow, suddenly inconsequential. Then just as suddenly, we get an "oopsies".

The religious right has often made political strides far greater than even they could have imagined, because they were ignored, misunderstood and/or underestimated by their opponents.  

Isn't it time we changed that?

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