More good news for the Republicans: now their core is revolting. Rather, I should say, it probably will in the next series of revelations coming out about the Republican Party. And like the Foley scandal, the shots are coming from the right, not the left, making the charges that much more significant.

If you read the political blogs, you’ll have heard about Tempting Faith, a book written by former Bush White House staffer David Kuo. Kuo used to be a “special assistant to the president,” and was the number-two man in Bush’s “Office of Faith-Based Initiatives.” Kuo’s primary charge is that while the Bush White House claimed to be loyal to the evangelicals, behind closed doors they ridiculed them, and continued to make promises they knew they would never back up.

“Tempting Faith’s” author is David Kuo, who served as special assistant to the president from 2001 to 2003. A self-described conservative Christian, Kuo’s previous experience includes work for prominent conservatives including former Education Secretary and federal drug czar Bill Bennett and former Attorney General John Ashcroft.

Kuo, who has complained publicly in the past about the funding shortfalls, goes several steps further in his new book.

He says some of the nation’s most prominent evangelical leaders were known in the office of presidential political strategist Karl Rove as “the nuts.”

“National Christian leaders received hugs and smiles in person and then were dismissed behind their backs and described as ‘ridiculous,’ ‘out of control,’ and just plain ‘goofy,’” Kuo writes.

More seriously, Kuo alleges that then-White House political affairs director Ken Mehlman knowingly participated in a scheme to use the office, and taxpayer funds, to mount ostensibly “nonpartisan” events that were, in reality, designed with the intent of mobilizing religious voters in 20 targeted races.

Kuo credits this manipulation for winning 19 of those 20 races, and says the strategy was instrumental for winning Ohio for Bush. Certainly, in more states than just Ohio, the Christian turnout was largely credited for giving Bush and the Republicans the lift they needed. They don’t call them the “core” and the “base” for nothing.

But now, things are changing. Evangelicals were already turning away from voting the Republican Party line before Kuo’s claims were made public. The war in Iraq and the Foley matter are two issues which have turned them off; Kuo reveals that Republicans have also been stripping money from their pet social programs, and crassly used and manipulated the movement’s leaders and followers while not really agreeing with or caring about their values. It probably doesn’t help that Bush and the GOP so shamelessly use them as pawns in elections, as with the fake gay marriage issue.

For several election cycles now, Republicans have brought up the gay marriage issue, because they know it energizes the base, and gets them to the polls. It alienates them from the Democrats, who vote the other way. But when the election smoke clears, the Republicans always turn out to have abandoned the issue; they only put forth gay marriage bills they know will not pass, all for show and nothing else. After being revved up so many times and then coming away with nothing, the evangelicals are probably starting to feel like Charlie Brown trying to kick Lucy’s football.

This is not to say that Bush and the GOP are not the best friends of the religious right; the Christians will always get more of what they want from Republicans than they will from Democrats. Bush is actually with them on several issues, such as breaking separation of church and state and abortion, to name a few. But Bush and the GOP are clearly not willing to go nearly as far as the Christian conservatives want them to go. To liberals, the degree of separation between Republicans and the evangelicals may be one of an insignificant degree (they all blend in together from our vantage point, it seems), but that degree is a yawning chasm to many social conservatives, who are beginning to find out that money, business, and power are more important to the GOP than are faith and values.

The funny thing is, Republicans have always tried to steer blacks away from the polls by throwing out the idea that the Democratic Party takes them for granted; now, however, the shoe is on the other foot, as evangelicals are seeing that the Republican Party is taking them for granted. To boot, Democrats don’t look down on blacks the way Republicans look down on evangelicals. Were it to come out that Nancy Pelosi and Howard Dean, in private, called blacks “nuts,” “out of control,” and “just plain goofy,” there would certainly be a backlash. Same difference here.

If anything, Kuo’s book is going to turn more people off of the Republican Party. This won’t make many evangelicals vote Democrat, but it will make them stay away from the polls and vote less enthusiastically for any Republican candidate or cause. And with the Christian base being vital for Republicans to win elections, that could be a nuclear bomb for candidates in tight races this November. Certainly, the timing of Kuo’s book is not accidental–and like with the Foley scandal, however hard they try, Republicans won’t be able to pin this one on Democrats.

The election is still four weeks away, and anything could happen. But if it ever looked like the right-wing chickens are coming home to roost, this is it.

Keith Olbermann, by the way, is all over this, breaking most of the story. Check out Part One of his broadcasts on the story at Crooks & Liars.