A representative sample?

The Arlington Group is primarily intrested in power and the conservative status quo. They've all fed off it for over a decade. They are suspicious of Huckabes the same way Jackson and Sharpton are suspicious of Obama because they fear their form of divisive, extremist politics could be over.

I just looked at the memebers on the Wiki entry. Or at least some of the people they think are the memebers. If Huckabee got 50 percent of that group I am impressed

jh has a point. The Arlington Group Membership list is generally consistent with the Wikipedia entry characterization: "leaders of almost all of the most prominent Christian Right organizations in the United States," but there are enough exceptions to make it a pretty motley crew.

"Prominence" in this case does not equate to gravitas, nor is the list all "conservative evangelicals" as Levin has it.

Don Wildmon, a co-founder, is Chicken Little on all matters media ("Ohmygawd! This show has a homosexual character who's not demon-possessed!"). Paul Weyrich, the other co-founder, is a very effective operative, but not an evangelical. Susan B. Anthony List is a pro-life feminist PAC which really doesn't fit in the Christian Right camp at all, though its leader apparently thought it useful to affiliate with Arlington Group. Alan Sears is not an evangelical, though all the ADF founders were. CatholicVote.org doesn't sound very evangelical to me.

I don't often exhibit my membership card in the vast right-wing conspiracy because its tone too often is divisive. But then, I've rarely seen a fundraising letter, left or right, that wasn't shrill, divisive - even demonizing. I challenged the tone of one Arlington Group affiliate's fundraising letters a few years ago, and got an anguished personal reply from a leader to the effect of "You've upset me. Fundraising is really hard. We have to be shrill."

I'm grateful for the conciliatory tones of Huckabee and Obama even as I remain skeptical about the imminence of the eschaton.