"Counting on Nausea"

Fascinating profile article on former Republican Senator John Danforth, who also happens to be an ordained Episcopalian minister and is taking on the dominance of the Religious Right mullahs in his own party.

"The Republican Party has been taken over by something that it's not," Danforth says. "How do traditional Republicans put up with [intolerant Protestant evangelicalism]? They put up with this because it's a winning combination, for now. It won't last."

"I'm counting on nausea," he says.

What turned Danforth into a vocal Republican dissenter was the Terri Schiavo case: "If you turned on Fox News, you would hear relentless talking heads talking about, 'They're killing Terri!' and 'This is murder!' " Danforth says. "I thought, 'This is not what the Republican Party does. The only explanation for it was an effort to appease the Christian right.' "