The point of this article in the Democratic Party Pravda is so frigging obvious, you should have caught it right off: It attempts to mash economic conservatism (the driving force in the last election), patriotism, and American exceptionalism into a single homogenized lump with what they see as religious extremism.

In other words, if you fly a flag every day or want lower taxes, you're probably one of those religious "kooks."

Like the "racism" of the Tea Party, this issue is being invented out of whole cloth by a Left that is intellectually bankrupt and (as we're seeing) can't deal with the real issues.

The Left, of which Newsweek is a fawning lapdog, has been "crediting" evangelicals with conservative electoral success for a long time now. Even though polls (as I've shown before) prove that's not true at all. In fact, the article itself, which is barely coherent, contradicts this idea in a later paragraph. Newsweek does not want to address the real 2010 election issue: the raw socialist crap that the Democrats have tried to punch through over the last two years.

As for Glen Beck and the Shining City...

.

^"And so it is that I carry with me from this state to that high and lonely office to which I now succeed more than fond memories of firm friendships. The enduring qualities of Massachusetts – the common threads woven by the Pilgrim and the Puritan, the fisherman and the farmer, the Yankee and the immigrant – will not be and could not be forgotten in this nation's executive mansion.

"They are an indelible part of my life, my convictions, my view of the past, and my hopes for the future.

"Allow me to illustrate: During the last sixty days, I have been at the task of constructing an administration. It has been a long and deliberate process. Some have counseled greater speed. Others have counseled more expedient tests.

"But I have been guided by the standard John Winthrop set before his shipmates on the flagship Arbella three hundred and thirty-one years ago, as they, too, faced the task of building a new government on a perilous frontier.

"'We must always consider,' he said, 'that we shall be as a city upon a hill – the eyes of all people are upon us.'

"Today the eyes of all people are truly upon us – and our governments, in every branch, at every level, national, state and local, must be as a city upon a hill – constructed and inhabited by men aware of their great trust and their great responsibilities."

- Address of President-Elect John F. Kennedy Delivered to a Joint Convention of the General Court of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts^