DALLAS - A leading social conservative, who asked not to be named, has confirmed reports in Politico and The New York Times that major players in the movement plan to meet in Virginia next week after Tuesday’s presidential election between Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain.

Their mission will be  to chart the next course for their movement and the Republican Party.

If McCain and his running mate Sarah Palin – the rising star with this set — pull off an upset win, they will be in a jubilant mood. But the meeting seems more premised on the scenario of a McCain loss, which most opinion polls suggest at this point.

“There is a consensus that the Republican Party is in trouble,” said the source, who plans to attend the meeting.

“I think there will be a number of meetings after next Tuesday among social conservatives,” the source said, adding they would be aimed at reigniting the movement and keeping its agenda high in Republican circles.

Religious and social conservatives are a key base of support for the Republican Party who enthusiastically backed President George W. Bush but they have been frustrated in this election cycle.

During the primary elections, they could not rally behind any one candidate. When McCain finally clinched the Republican nomination, many were aghast because of his departure from social conservative orthodoxy on many issues such as stem cell research, immigration and campaign finance reform.

They have been galvanized by Palin, who has brought God and guns firmly onto the ticket. The financial crisis has riveted voter attention on economic woes — although for a core set of activists, evangelicals and conservative Catholics, issues like opposition to abortion rights and gay marriage remain paramount.

The meeting in Virginia next week also seems to be aimed at re-energizing the grassroots of the social conservative movement ahead of the 2010 congressional elections and the 2012 White House race.

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SUNRISE, Florida - Barack Obama said on Wednesday he was not worried that his race would cost him the presidential election.

Many polls show Obama, who would be the first black president in U.S. history, with a lead of between 5 and 9 percentage points over his Republican rival John McCain. But some pundits say the so-called “Bradley effect” could occur on Election Day on Tuesday that might cause Obama to lose.

The Bradley effect is named after former Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley, who lost the California governor’s election in 1982 despite polls predicting he would win.

Political analysts believe the surveys turned out to be wrong because voters did not want to appear bigoted and told pollsters they were voting for Bradley, who was black, even when they were not.

Some pundits have suggested Obama’s unexpected loss to his Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton in the New Hampshire primary election in January might have been an example of the Bradley effect.

Asked on Comedy Central’s Daily Show with Jon Stewart whether he was worried about that pattern occurring on Nov. 4,  Obama said he was not.

“(The pundits) have been saying that for a while but we’re still here. So I don’t think white voters have gotten this memo about the Bradley effect,” Obama said.

Stewart noted that Obama is the biracial son of a white woman from Kansas and a black man from Kenya.

He asked if Obama might go into the voting booth and decide he could not cast the ballot for himself.

“It’s a problem,” Obama joked. “I’ve been going through therapy to make sure that I vote properly on the 4th.”

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- Photo credit: Reuters/Jason Reed (Obama and running mate Joe Biden at a rally)

SUNRISE, Florida - With two days until Halloween, Democratic vice presidential candidate Joe Biden has offered Republican presidential hopeful John McCain some costume suggestions.

As the Nov. 4 election looms, the Delaware senator poked fun at McCain’s promise that his policies differ from Republican President George W. Bush.

“I know Halloween is just around the corner. Folks, John McCain, dressed as an agent of change, that costume doesn’t fit,” Biden said as he warmed up the crowd for Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama in Sunrise, Florida, late on Wednesday.

“John McCain, who bragged about voting 90 percent of the time with George Bush. There is not one single substantive difference.”

Biden used the same joke earlier at a stump speech in Jupiter, Florida. No word on what Biden plans to wear for Halloween.

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WASHINGTON - Colin Powell, a retired U.S. Army general and former secretary of state in the Bush administration, criticized fellow Republicans on Sunday and endorsed Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama.

The Republican Party “has moved more to the right than I would like to see it,” Powell told NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

Powell described Obama as an inspirational figure and denounced some efforts by White House contender John McCain and other Republicans to defeat him.

He ripped into McCain for trying to tie Obama to Bill Ayers, a one-time violent anti-Vietnam War activist who decades later served with Obama on a charity board.

“What they’re trying to connect him to is some kind of terrorist feelings,” Powell said. “This goes too far and I think it has made the McCain campaign look a little narrow.”

Powell said he was also troubled that some members of the Republican Party — not McCain — have said, “‘Well you know that Mr. Obama is a Muslim.’”

“He is not a Muslim, he’s a Christian,” Powell said. “But the really right answer is ‘what if he is?’ Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country? The answer’s no.”

Powell said Obama understands the issues and has reached out across across ethnic, racial and generational lines.

“He speaks authoritatively. He speaks with great insight into the challenges we’re facing of a military and political and economic nature,” Powell said. “He has both style and substance — he has met the standard of being a successful president, being an exceptional president.”

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Photo credit: Reuters/Alessia Pierdomenico (Colin Powell at an event on London on Oct. 14)

DALLAS - Another day, another video showing Sarah Palin in church.

The latest Palin You Tube video to show up on the Internet features grainy footage of John McCain’s vice presidential running mate receiving a blessing against witchcraft in a Pentecostal church in her hometown of Wasilla, Alaska.

You can see the video here. Palin says nothing in it and keeps her head bowed throughout the blessing that was reportedly given by a Kenyan pastor and witch hunter.

The video, like a previous one in which Palin tells a congregation that U.S. troops in Iraq were on a “task from God,”  has been widely reported and commented on. It reportedly was made in 2005 before she was elected governor of Alaska. It began circulating on the Internet this week.

Palin is an evangelical who has ignited the Republican Party’s conservative Christian base. But incidents such as this one have raised eyebrows in some quarters, especially among foreign media covering the U.S. campaign in the run-up to the Nov. 4 election between McCain/Palin and Democrats Barack Obama and Joe Biden.

The online edition of Britain’s Telegraph newspaper said the incident recalled the damaging reports that Obama faced over his links to pastor Jeremiah Wright, who made stridently anti-American sermons.

To see some domestic media criticism, click here.

Some U.S. evangelicals will see nothing strange in a Pentecostal service evoking witchcraft. And many others will no doubt say what a candidate does in a church is nobody else’s business. 

Are candidates, their pastors and what they do in church fair game in this election year? Or not?

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Photo credit: REUTERS/Brian Snyder  (Palin listens to McCain at the Clinton Global Initiative Annual Meeting in New York on Sept. 25, 2008)

DALLAS - When Americans vote for a new president on Nov. 4, many will also be asked to have their say on local issues and proposed state constitutional amendments.

Much of the attention has been focused on the attempts to ban gay marriage in California and Florida, which we have written about elsewhere.

Similar initiatives in 2004 were seen as crucial to President George W. Bush’s re-election victory as they energized the Republican Party’s conservative evangelical base.  Propositions are initiated locally people who collect enough signatures to have them put on the ballot. If passed by voters they carry the force of law.

Ballotwatch, which is part of the Initiative & Referendum Institute at the University of Southern California, released a preview Thursday of the initiatives that will coincide with this year’s presidential battle between Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama.

It said that as of early August, voters in 30 states are set to decide on 112 ballot propositions and the number is likely to grow as several states are still verifying signatures and some legislatures are considering additional measures. (In 2004 there were 162 propositions and 204 in the 2006 mid-term elections).

“The big story for ballot propositions this year is the surge of social issues. The tax and spending issues that normally dominate initiatives and referendums are taking a back seat to a diverse collection of social issues,” it says in its report.

These also include an anti-abortion rights measure in South Dakota and attempts to roll back affirmative action in Colorado, which will keep the issue of race on the boil.

Animal rights and welfare issues have also emerged in a big way this year.

In Oklahoma, State Question 742 will seek to establish a state constitutional right to hunt and fish — a “pre-emptive” strike against the animal rights crowd.

Given Obama’s famous comments about rural voters clinging to their guns, the measure is likely to benefit McCain, though Oklahoma is already pretty solidly Republican.

In Alaska, ballot measure 2 will ask voters to ban the aerial hunting of bears, wolves and wolverines — a measure sure to excite both sides of the issue. (And shock a lot of people who don’t realize that you can shoot wolves from planes?)

And in Massachusetts, voters will be asked to decriminalize marijuana.

The ballot measures offer a good look at the intersect of politics and culture in America — and just how polarized society is.

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Photo credit: Top Reuters/Erin Siegel (Couple after marriage in June); Middle Reuters/Keith Bedford (Hunters in December); and Bottom Reuters/Ho New (Wolves in February)