Many have declared the United States is on a fast track to the right, but just how quickly is the nation traveling toward nationalism and the even more unsavory stops on the railway to the right?

A couple of recent cases seem to pretty quickly show how far to the right things are lately are going in Washington, particularly since President George W. Bush regained his presidential chair by this time actually gaining an election victory.

One example is the shameless removal of restrictions on Tom DeLay, Republican Majority Leader for the House of Representatives. The second example is the bloodlust in the Christian right-wing, which sought to deny the Senate Judiciary Committee to GOP Senator Arlen Specter because he is ‘soft on,’ if not actually pro-abortion.

Texas Republic Tom DeLay has been playing hardball with Democrats for years. His nickname’s "the Hammer," and it’s not intended to be a friendly appellation, but it does reflect how he uses power.

If you are a GOP candidate and you need money, you go to DeLay. If you want help, go to DeLay. Mr. DeLay has little use for compromise. Since the GOP has maintained a majority in Congress, his actions and his statements and posture indicate that the vengeful, uncompromising use of power is what he considers normal.

DeLay’s treatment of his home state is a classic example. Texas, perhaps as a last vestige of its Confederate past, still had many Democratic legislators, both in Congress and in the Texas State House and Legislature. Democrats were, after all, not the party of Lincoln, and some stalwarts stayed with the Democrats even when the GOP clearly became more reactionary.

But the new, radical GOP is perfectly in alignment with the values and belief systems of the Old Confederacy, and the old-line Democrats, some of whom were conservative and some were middle-of-the-road, were increasingly a problem and a perceived embarrassment for the powerful Speaker of the House. Soon Mr. DeLay was able, however, to show Texas and the nation what he can do with one-party power.

It was a simple plan; Mr. DeLay orchestrated, through funding and behind-the-scenes maneuvering, the re-configuration of a number of Texas voting districts. Lo and behold, suddenly Texas gained five new Republican representatives.

While DeLay’s grip has increased his rule over the Republicans, and of course things are easier now that George Bush won an election, he still had troubles during the last term.

The House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct – the internal ethics committee – rebuked DeLay for calling the Federal Aviation Administration to interfere in a Texas political dispute and for hosting a fundraiser attended by corporate executives with interests in a federal energy bill.

Earlier, DeLay got another knuckle rap for telling one important GOP politico that Bush wanted that the man’s son to vote his way on Medicare and in return he would get DeLay’s endorsement in his own congressional race.

Further, three friends of DeLay are facing indictment in a Texas probe into laundering corporation money for legislative races though TRMPAC, founded by DeLay.

It’s possible that if these scandals continue to erupt with substance, such as definable indications of Mr. DeLay’s involvement in twisting the election process, an indictment could issue at any time. If so, he would be pushed out of the enormously important seat as U.S. House Majority Leader.

Those are the House rules.

So what is the responsible legislator supposed to do?

Well, since his ouster from the majority leader’s post is mandated by House rules, not the law itself, the obvious path to relief is in changing the rules. Which is exactly what the Republican dominated House decided to do.

High priests of the Republican Party convened and in their wisdom decided that there would be a whole new procedure. Should a powerful Republican find himself named in an indictment, well then the other powerful Republicans would be his judges.

They would look at the indictment and decide if it were worthy of any punishment. Losing one’s powerful seat would not necessarily follow; not at all.

After all, as Rep. Henry Bonilla, R-Texas, put it: "This takes the power away from any partisan crackpot district attorney who may want to indict" such an honorable public servant as Mr. "Hammer" DeLay.

It doesn’t take too much reading between the lines to realize that what Rep. Bonilla is really saying is that in case any Democratic district attorney decides to actually try to live up to his oath of office, this will prevent Mr. DeLay, or any other top Republicans, from the embarrassment of having to deal with the problem. It seems likely that Mr. Bonilla doesn’t even realize that he has slurred all GOP district attorneys at the same time. With one broad brush he implies that no Republican district attorney would live up to his oath of office, but that instead all such GOP officials would simply follow the party line, whether they had to swallow hard or not.

It’s also fair to assume that Rep. Bonilla is implying that any district attorney’s who are independents or members of a minority national party would fall on the side of the wrong kind of partisanship; that is, failing to be a partisan Republican.

Thank goodness that in the past the nation has been well served by a number of district attorneys whom the current crop of radical Republicans would obviously consider partisan crackpots.

What sort of contorted logic led to that little bit of wisdom from Texas Rep. Bonilla?

Of course there were some Democrats who had a different take on the Republicans in-house rules change. Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-California, said: "If they make this rules change, Republicans will confirm yet again that they simply do not care if their leaders are ethical. If Republicans believe that an indicted member should allowed to hold a top leadership position in the House of Representatives, their arrogance is astonishing."

Yes, it is.

Republicans passed the change in their party rule.

They will decide on penalties for future indictments.

This was, truly, DeLay’s most powerful moment. Change your party’s rulebook for your own protection. It was a so-called conservative victory by the strong man in the House, and strictly for the strong man in the House. In reality, of course, there is nothing conservative about the current Republican Party; it’s as radical as anything that has been seen in American politics in the nation’s history. And Mr. DeLay is a perfect example of the GOP’s radicalism. What will he do next term?

Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter has been a Republican regular for years.

He has been around long enough to be in line for the next Senate Judiciary Committee chairmanship. This is the zenith of his legislative career.

But he had a little problem with the Christian right.

He has always favored a woman’s right to abortion.

And so, all the rest of Sen. Specter’s career means nothing.

Republican as he can be, his belief in abortion had the Christian right striving for his ouster from the judiciary seat. They have mailed tons of letters against him, protested against him, talked to other Senators about him and they have come to Washington to do something they feel is most important – they have prayed against him.

Among them were national pro-life leaders such as Troy Newman of Operation Rescue, Rev. Pat Mahoney of the Christian Defense Coalition, Rev. Rob Schenck of Faith and Action, and Chris Slattery, a pro-life, pro-family activist from New York City.

They stood outside the Dirksen Senate Office building to pray against him.

"We want the Republican leadership to clearly understand that the appointment of Senator Specter, as chair of the Judiciary Committee, would be a slap in the face to the millions of pro-life/pro-family Americans who helped elect the President and who give the Republicans a majority in the House and Senate. All the damage control Specter has attempted to accomplish over the past ten days has done nothing to convince us he will be a passionate and zealous advocate for the judicial agenda of President Bush and (that he will) fight against judicial activism. Senator (William) Frist must determine if 'seniority' is more important than principle or the core base of the Republican Party," said Rev. Patrick Mahoney, director of the Christian Defense Coalition, a co-sponsor.

Ah, so it is all clear now.

This coalition undertook a couple of dangerous things.

First, it has made it perfectly clear that now that the Religious Right has helped George W. Bush regain the White House, they want their agenda followed explicitly.

But why is that dangerous; don’t all political groups want to see their agendas materialize if their candidate is successful?

It is dangerous because the agenda of the Religious Right is founded on principles that conflict with the founding precepts of the nation. The Religious Right wants to set in place a set of goals and guidelines that will in effect create a national religion.

Religion has grown strong in homes, churches, temples, mosques and synagogues throughout the nation, and it should flourish in those places of worship. And it should grow in individual families.

But religion should never grow in the courts, legislatures, public schools and the like. It does not fit there. Mixing public institutions with private religious beliefs will always, eventually, bring people into religious battles and undermine the given society.

Here, the Religious Right wanted more than a given law; here it wanted to change the very way in which the Senate names its own chairmen. It didn’t get its way, but it did achieve the goal of further eroding the wall between church and state, and it managed to make an honorable public servant, Sen. Specter, have to humble himself and announce that he would unswervingly support Pres. Bush and his policies and proposals

Is that the kind of elected representatives the Religious Right wants? People whomust meet a litmus test of absolute adherence to the party line? What about the constituents who elected Arlen Specter!

It’s clearly an all or nothing world that the radical Republicans and their Religious Right cohorts inhabit, but it is also antithetical to the American system of government.

The U.S. Senators who gave in on that score, or who rode out the political storm by staying quiet and out of the way, had their power tested and failed. They failed their constituents and they failed the Constitution and the American people.

A deal was brokered and Sen. Specter may gain his chairmanship when the new Congress is called into session next year, but even if he wins the seat he deserves, the Religious Right and the GOP leadership damaged the senate and the Constitutional process. How far the hard right-wing has come is illustrated in the fact that people who spent their entire lives reaching the Senate were reluctant to sacrifice their hard-won power by standing up to the insidiousness of the Religious Right. In effect, they lost their power by not exercising it; the next time, the Religious Right will be even stronger.

Also, of course, it is dangerous to see the use of prayer to oppose an elected official. Prayer is far different than any other form of speech. It is a direct address to God.

The Religious Right publicly asked God to oppose Arlen Specter. They were not praying to the Senate leader or any other human being, instead they stood in public and asked God to force their will on the public process.

Praying for direct conclusions might be alright in their homes or churches, but on the steps of the Senate it makes it clear that people in the Religious Right think they have the right to demand the will of God to be done simply because they are praying for it. They wish to monopolize politics and the force of law by invoking the hand of God.

What are the consequences of such politics, for politics is what it is? Will prayer dictate our other issues?

Evolution, gay marriage, abortion, the Iraq war, foreign policy, space travel, food distribution to the poor, scholarships, Medicare, health care in general and a hundred more issues that relate to daily life could be up to who has God’s ear, or what group is strong enough to declare that God is only on their side.

That would be ridiculous if it were discussed even a few years ago. But that is precisely the path we are beginning to follow if we let the priests and reverends and the religiously motivated dictate our public policy and direct the courses of action we take as a nation.. Sen. Specter will find out next year if he will win the Senate Judiciary Committee chairmanship, and in the process all of us may find out how deeply the Religious Right grips the United States of America.

So-called conservatism is helping DeLay from one side and threatening Specter from another. But both examples illustrate very plainly that a new brand of right-wing radicalism, masking itself as conservatism, is squarely in the driver’s seat right now.

Just how firmly it squeezes the nation remains to be seen.