I keep a watch on mainstream usages of the term “theocracy” in articles describing what the Republicans and their Religious Right base are up to.

But I was disappointed in the below excerpted NyTimes editorial. The editors did not say the magic word.

However, the editorial stepped right up to the line ……….

The New York Times > Opinion > The Disappearing Wall

To the dismay of many mainstream religious leaders, the Senate majority leader, Bill Frist, participated in a weekend telecast organized by conservative Christian groups to smear Democrats as enemies of “people of faith.” Besides listening to Senator Frist’s videotaped speech, viewers heard a speaker call the Supreme Court a despotic oligarchy. Meanwhile, the House majority leader, Tom DeLay, has threatened the judiciary for not following the regressive social agenda he shares with the far-right fundamentalists controlling his party.

Apart from confirming an unwholesome disrespect for traditional American values like checks and balances, the assault on judges is part of a wide-ranging and successful Republican campaign to breach the wall between church and state to advance a particular brand of religion.

[snip]

In a recent Op-Ed article in The Times, John Danforth, the former Republican senator and U.N. ambassador who is also a minister, said his party was becoming a political arm of the religious right.

[snip]