At some point, Republicans realized that their supporters were the same brainless idiots who were getting fleeced on a weekly basis by televangelists like Jimmy Swaggart, Jim Bakker, Ernest Aingley, Oral Roberts, Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell. So the first thing they did was invite them into the tent so they could learn how to do it. Now these evangelists are part-preachers and part-politicians while politicians are part-preachers. This is where the so-called "prosperity gospel" came from; the blending of neocon economics, rapacious capitalism and fundamentalist Christianity into one, humongous, all-encompassing, non-stop grift.