Or is that all small potatoes? "What does it mean if and when a believer in the infallibility of Biblical prophecy comes to power and backs a damn-the-torpedoes course in the Middle East? Does it end up fuelling overenthusiastic endtimers who feel they have nothing to lose in some future conflagration, helping speed the world on [a] fast track to Armageddon?"

And you thought you were voting for a GST cut. McDonald introduces four religious conservatives as pillars of Harper's Ottawa: Charles McVetey of the Defend Marriage Coalition, a "power to be reckoned with"; Dave Quist, a "seasoned political player" who runs the Institute of Marriage and Family Canada; and Rob and Fran Parker, who run the National House of Prayer.

McVetey threatens nomination battles to replace MPs who favour same-sex marriage with proper God-fearing types. It hasn't gone well. He "sprang into action" against Mark Holland, the Liberal MP for McVetey's own riding, Ajax-Pickering. McVetey installed Rondo Thomas, an evangelical Christian, over two better-known candidates for the Conservative nomination.

Thomas promptly lost big. Holland tells me the two Conservatives McVetey ran over would have been tougher opponents. So the personal intervention of the fearsome McVetey helped save a Liberal seat. McVetey didn't lift a finger to fulfill similar "threats" against pro-gay Conservatives like John Baird, Gerald Keddy, Jim Prentice and James Moore; if he had, the Liberals might still be in power.

Dave Quist? The launch of his think tank drew "more than a dozen MPs," McDonald writes, as though Ottawa doesn't see 15 events a night with that kind of pull. Quist spent six years as executive assistant to Reed Elley, an amiable back-backbencher. Then he managed to lose Elley's Nanaimo-Cowichan riding when he ran in the 2004 election. He worked for Harper until the Opposition leader's office was downsized in 2005. On the day of the Throne Speech, McDonald reveals, Quist was a lunch guest of Senator Anne Cools.

Rob and Fran Parker perceived messages from the Lord in newspaper headlines two years ago. Today, with visitors, they walk around the Centre Block praying. Sometimes they run into Stephen Harper. Never had an official meeting with him, mind you. But they have, McDonald writes, "certainly shared with him in passing -- in the hallways or wherever."

These are McDonald's Christian soldiers: a failed candidate, a champion of failed candidates, and a pair of devout loiterers. From them she extrapolates "a burgeoning bond between evangelical Christians and Jews" that "could leave [Harper] unbeatable at the ballot box."

In journalism it is almost always a good idea to count. About 12 per cent of Canadians self-identify as evangelicals and 1.2 per cent are Jewish. The NDP gets better numbers. McDonald sometimes throws in Catholics to make the Harper theo-con coalition less risible, but come on: how many Catholics do you know who vote the way the Pope tells them to?

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