The wedge issue in the 2000 elections was "moralism". Evangelicals, supporting Bush, positioned the Democrats as a moral liability for the nation and sought to make VP Al Gore a complicit of President Clinton's "Monica sex scandal" and "Whitewater kickbacks", thereby forcing a distance between the two. Even though Gore won the popular vote, this strategy helped thinned his national support nonetheless.

In 2004, the wedge issue was clearly "patriotism". Evangelicals and the conservatives positioned Senator John Kerry and the Democrats as "weak on national security". They reopened Kerry's record and outcry against Vietnam war as an unpatriotic activism sponsored by socialists newly empowered in the gains and successes of the civil rights protests of the late 60s and early 70s. Coupled with his ambivalency to "flip and flop", one moment supporting an idea and then soon turning against it moments later, he was painted as a risky option to trust with the national security of a nation in the middle of war with Islamic terrorists.

In 2008, the wedge issue remained "patriotism". President Bush failed to prove that the country was necessarily safer with Republicans than with Democrats. Given the many setbacks of the war and the discovery that the Government is increasingly encroaching on citizens' rights - a hard pill for Conservatives to swallow - it was very difficult for the Evangelicals to march forward against Democrats. Adding to that, the popularity surge for then Senator Obama far outweighed any possibility that a wedge issue - especially that patriotism has lost juice early in the year - would be a determinant in vote results. Then the scandal of "Too Big to Fail Banks" erupted and the only candidate who could articulate and give word to the escalating problem was Obama - though he was the least knowledgable about the regulations - and not McCain.

In 2012. . . . . there will be a wedge issue! So far since President Obama took office, the Evangelicals and the Conservatives feel a sense loss. They have a sense of America being stolen from them. . . . not as a partisan issue but on a racial level. They believe the country was founded by White noble men, having a non-white person on the throne of rulership is a sacrilegious and abominable infringement and they are determined to seize it back by whatever means possible.

To do that successfully they will frame their wedge around "Islam and big government". Loosely, it translates to "patriotism and free-market". They will argue that Obama and Democrats are weak on security and when faced with a decisive moment they fail to play hardball. . . that they readily yield ground to terror and people who are planning to 'Islamize America".

They will argue that President Obama campaigned to "redistribute wealth" - the episode with Joe the plumber comes to mind! - and that he indeed carried out that promise in his economic and trade policies. . . . .by bailing out Wall street bankers and Detroit Automakers. That left alone to operate, unaided, the free-market capitalism would have corrected and the country might have recovered sooner and less burdened by debts.

In 2012, the White House will be contested and also the House seats that were just voted in this November. Democrats have ample opportunity ahead to begin drafting a "counter-wedge" issues that will portray Republicans and their Evangelical and TPM sympathizers as a delicate and deranged bunch to keep out of Washington and White House in 2012.