We’re in the middle of the most Bible-toting, Scripture-quoting presidential campaign in recent memory. So where are the Christians — the evangelical, deeply conservative Christians, that is, who so famously propelled George W. Bush into office? The nation’s finally talking about Jesus, and they’re missing it?

Not exactly. Some are still home sulking: They feel betrayed, because the officials they elected to enact their agenda … didn’t, and the contenders this time around clearly won’t. But feistier Christian conservatives are using everything from blogs to pulpits to influence the course of the presidential race. They may not have a candidate they like, but they have one they can’t abide, and that’s Barack Obama.

A startling number of Christian conservatives have decided that the junior senator from Illinois is a covert black supremacist, a Marxist, and a baby killer. So instead of giving their considerable energy to a Republican shoo-in who bores them, they’re aiming it against Obama — with ammunition coming from conservative activists in Illinois. They have watched him in action in the Illinois General Assembly, met him, lobbied him, even tiptoed into his church — and now they can tell the rest of the country why he’s the worst possible choice for president.

Is a man who talks of God necessarily a follower of Christ’s teachings? Does God-talk make a man more moral?

Then I recalled how my good friend Machiavelli once told me about how he set down one of the most explicit doctrines for modern politics while advising a sixteenth-century prince, counseling him to do whatever was practical for the sake of power, and that it was highly effective to use moral principles and especially religion to achieve success. Today’s politician often operates on Machiavelli’s counsel by appealing to the general public’s feelings about ethics as a rhetorical means to obtain popular support.

Machiavelli also advised the use of fear as a means to establish power, believing that a man’s flexibility in morality and religion enables him to gain political success as fortune (social attitudes) changes over time. “Thus, it is not necessary for a prince to have all the above-mentioned virtues in fact, but it is indeed necessary to appear to have them,” says Machiavelli.

Elizabeth Edwards has cancer. John McCain has had cancer in the past. Last weekend, Mrs. Edwards bluntly pointed out that neither of them would be able to get insurance under Mr. McCain’s health care plan.

It’s about time someone said that and, more generally, made the case that Mr. McCain’s approach to health care is based on voodoo economics — not the supply-side voodoo that claims that cutting taxes increases revenues (though Mr. McCain says that, too), but the equally foolish claim, refuted by all available evidence, that the magic of the marketplace can produce cheap health care for everyone.