Dear Congressman, I came across your comments regarding conservative Christians like Dr. James Dobson today. Very nice of you to not pull any punches on how you really feel about us.

I'm a tad confused, however. Where did it all go wrong, Dick? It's not like Dr. Dobson and his organization Focus on the Family have been a rival of yours. If anything, it's been just the opposite:

"We are going to lose a very good friend," said Connie Mackey, vice president of government relations at the Family Research Council. "Dick Armey is someone who has worked very closely with conservatives all these years, and has done the Lord's work." ...

David Varnam, issues response coordinator for Focus on the Family, said a lot of very good legislation would not have happened without Armey's conservative leadership in the House.

And when you received an award from the Christian Coalition, you were extremely thankful saying ...

" The Christian Coalition took a chance on us," he said, "and I hope we haven't disappointed you."

You've even gone so far as to defend the current administration from charges that they are "deliberately trying to bring about the end times:"

I don't believe that any people in office in a position of responsibility and authority in the United States today is trying to force these circumstances predicted in the Bible to come to pass.

You also wanted organizations like Focus on the Family to be able to spend up to 20% of their income on lobbying Congress. And now you say they're the problem in politics. I mean, that seems like a lot of love to me, as long as you were the recipient of the 20%, I guess.

Then there's the very fact that you were a middle man for Doctor Dobson and the Republican leadership while you were in office, and that you supported much of Dobson's agenda on homosexual rights.

Finally, you were such a supporter of such organizations as the Council for National Policy, which you were a member along side such Religious Conservatives as Dobson.

And now, you're calling Dobson and supporters of him "thugs," using the Terri Schiavo law as fodder? Wow, that really confusing. If you could, kindly explain to me how trying to save a woman's life when it isn't altogether clear if she desires to die is thugish behavior? How is it that her parents lobbying both Governor Bush of Florida and the Republican Controlled Congress to save their little girl work done by, as Webster put it: literally, thief
: a brutal ruffian or assassin? See, either, you're deliberately disregarding the record regarding the Schiavo case, or you haven't been paying attention enough to bother to get the facts straight.

So tell me, Dick, where did it all go wrong? Or is it simple positioning for someone who wants to be President in `08 and doesn't think the right's coattails are as long as they used to be? That perhaps the middle and the left may be the key to it?

And if so, who's doing the pandering now? I don't know, Dick. I like you, I really do. Always have. But if history has taught Republicans anything, it's any time you try and court your opponent's favor, you usually live to regret it.