"[T]he greatest track of virgin timber on the political landscape."

That's how Morton Blackwell, a Republican National Committee member from Virginia, described evangelicals in the late 1970s.  Here's the context for the quote from E.J. Dionne's column today:

In 1979, a group of conservative activists led by Paul Weyrich of the Free Congress Foundation and Morton Blackwell, a Republican National Committee member from Virginia, went to the Rev. Jerry Falwell, urging him to organize what became the Moral Majority.

Their primary goal was not religious but political: to enlist evangelicals behind conservative Republican candidates. Blackwell candidly called evangelicals "the greatest track of virgin timber on the political landscape." The activists reaped a mighty load.