Liberal bloggers will no doubt embrace the news that conservative Christians are losing faith in the Republican Party. “The proportion of Americans who say the Republican Party is friendly to religion fell 8 percentage points in the last year, to 47 percent from 55 percent. Among Catholics and white evangelical Protestants, the decline was 14 percentage points,” reports the NYT. Thing is, this isn’t the first time the Christian Right has played hard-to-get with the Republican Party. The same thing happened in 1988, when Pat Robertson mounted a serious primary challenge to Bush, Sr. The difference this time is that the masses are rumbling as well as the leaders. There’s a lot of talk of third parties, and, more interestingly, of co-opting Democrats into the movement. For the GOP to regain their loyalty, it will have to do more than buy off Ralph Reed. That’s the story liberals and secular conservatives should be paying attention to.