The proper reply to right wing religiosity is not to insist that politics and religion don't mix. This is the stock response of the left.

It is money, money, money! Not ideas, not principles, but money that reigns supreme in American politics.

The days when the words 'Hollywood actor' framed Ronald Reagan like bunny fingers as an ID tag and an implied insult seem far-off and quaint: nearly everybody in politics - candidate, consultant, pundit, and Tea Party crowd extra alike - is an actor now, a shameless ham in a hoked-up reality series that never stops.

Idealism is the despot of thought, just as politics is the despot of will.

Politics, as a practice, whatever its professions, has always been the systematic organization of hatreds.