you're gonna burn for asking the question! :P

Talk about the ULTIMATE "You're either for us or against us".

"Has this development been a good thing or a bad thing"?

Answer:  Put it this way, the only thing that could be worse than the religious wrong gaining power would be if the events from the movie "Day After Tommorow" took place....Such events included an ice age that ensued in days with temperatures dropping 100 degrees an hour in Canada, torandoes rip Hollywood sign from ground, people in Japan are clobbered by bowling-ball-size hailstones, & snow falls in New Delhi.......

  I certainly would not consider myself religious, however have no problem with religious leaders having a strong representation.  
  Unfortunately what we have in this administration is not good and sincere religious views getting representation, we have the lunatic, fringe, nuclear WW3 so Jesus can come back and damn the world to hell crowd gain influence at an alarming rate.  We are talking about the Bin Laden wing of the religious right!!!!  These WW3 seekers are just as bit dangerous as Bin Laden is and they have every bit as much desire to take this world towards a nuclear 3rd world war so Jesus can come and save them only.  They want to ignite WW3 from the Middle East which is why they are pushing for a very dangerous foreign policy lead by Ariel Sharon, the Bin Laden of Israel.

IOW, he did not make folks more religious, rather, religious folks have either gained in numbers or have become more active.

Pols say what they need to to get elected. Look at Kerry the warrior...what's that all about?? What's up with the Left being concerned about balancing the budget? (Even though they wanna do it by just hiking taxes!!) What's up with Pubs sponsoring minimum wage legistlation?

These guys walk a tightrope between doing the bidding of who buys em and the passing out the crumbs to the folks that vote for them.

BK

What legislation have they pushed through (limiting abortion or something like that), what Supreme Court posts have they got?  I don't think any.  Even Bush's faith-based charity initiative (the push to give federal funds to private, faith-based institutions) has failed.  Seems to me that Bush hasn't delivered to the religious right much of anything, which is why they are kind of apathetic to his reelection.

Including them.