A few interesting religious angles in Jane Mayer’s New Yorker piece about how Sarah Palin got picked.
First, the young blogger who brought her to the attention of the conservative blogosphere was a “Messianic Jew” (a type of evangelical) who believes that “the hand of God” played a role in choosing Palin: “The longer I worked on it the less I felt I was driving it. Something else was at work.”
Second, editors at the conservative magazine, The Weekly Standard, became impressed with her when a magazine fundraising cruise stopped in Alaska. One memorable moment: Palin’s lengthy grace before eating.
Most important, Mayer confirms a key point that had been previously suspected: McCain wanted to select Joe Lieberman, the Democrat-turned-Independent, but was convinced that doing so would prompt a floor fight at the Republican convention from social conservatives who would object to Lieberman’s pro-choice views on abortion.

A week or so before McCain named her, however, sources close to the campaign say, McCain was intent on naming his fellow-senator Joe Lieberman, an independent, who left the Democratic Party in 2006. David Keene, the chairman of the American Conservative Union, who is close to a number of McCain’s top aides, told me that “McCain and Lindsey Graham”–the South Carolina senator, who has been McCain’s closest campaign companion–“really wanted Joe.” But Keene believed that “McCain was scared off” in the final days, after warnings from his advisers that choosing Lieberman would ignite a contentious floor fight at the Convention, as social conservatives revolted against Lieberman for being, among other things, pro-choice.

If McCain loses, and if it appears that Palin was a net-minus, religious conservatives will have to grapple with their role in electing Obama.