Posted on 12/26/2014 4:50:01 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
The Christian Right continued to strengthen its grasp on the Republican party in 2014, as was evident in the mid-term election results across the country. And while we can all hope that 2015 will be different, it’s sadly highly unlikely.
Looking at the GOP candidates who might throw their hats into the 2016 presidential contest, it’s not hard to see the ties to the Religious Right.
“There’s former Gov. Mike Huckabee, of course,” wrote Ed Kilgore on Talking Points Memo, “a Southern Baptist minister whose 2008 campaign almost entirely relied on conservative evangelical voters … Rick Santorum, is a Catholic traditionalist who also appealed on moral and grounds to conservative evangelicals, and on occasion hinted that mainline Protestantism had been captured by Satan.”
“Texas Gov. Rick Perry has long enjoyed close relationships with crypto-dominionists and radical self-styled Christian Zionists,” continued Kilgore. “And fellow Texan Sen. Ted Cruz frequently deploys as his warm-up act his father Rafael Cruz, a fiery conservative evangelical minister who believes Christians must “take back society” from “the progressives” who are responsible for “the blood of 57 million babies…crying out to God, just like the blood of Abel cried out to God.”
Outside of Texas, which always seems to dominate the religious fervor come election time, there is a crop of conservative governors across the nation that look to push their religious beliefs on everyone. Louisiana’s Gov. Bobby Jindal wants creationism taught in schools. Wisconsin’s Scott Walker claims that he’s doing the Lord’s work by pushing his anti-union message. And Indiana’s Mike Pence has been “cozying up to David Lane, a Christian Right impresario who is especially active in organizing clerical audiences for would-be presidents in Iowa,” said Kilgore.
In the Senate, you have Florida’s Marco Rubio, who doesn’t believe in the Constitutionally-protected separation of Church and State. Kentucky’s Rand Paul has a “ longstanding connection to the openly theocratic U.S. Constitutional Party, and [is] especially close to Christian home-schoolers” wrote Kilgore. And “Ben Carson was recently the keynote speaker at a fundraising event for The Family Leader, Iowa’s premier Christian Right group; he’s notorious for embracing comparisons of America to Nazi Germany, a particularly strong habit among antichoice activists.”
And of course, who could forget current Republican presidential nominee front runner, Jeb Bush, who despite claims of being a moderate in the party, “touched off the Terri Schiavo hysteria in 2003 by intervening in a family’s end-of-life decisions.”
“So it’s pretty likely conservative Christian leaders will be making a less-than-joyful noise in the New Year,” concluded Kilgore, “lashing their troops into a frenzy of fear at the prospect of another liberal president and the hope of reshaping the country according to the Gospel of the Day Before Yesterday. Secular folk will shake their heads in disbelief, and progressive Christians will pray: ‘Lord Have Mercy.'”
I’ve been following his family since I was three years old and actually met him and his late father at Disneyland in 1968. They’re “Catholic” the same way that Mr. Obama is Church of Christ.
I still don’t know how you have decided that he isn’t a Catholic, I suppose you think that JFK and Ted Kennedy weren’t either?
You aren’t even Catholic, how do you figure that he isn’t?
Wow. You’re actually sitting here and defending the “Catholicness” of the Kennedy family? Do you know nothing about them?
Wow. You’re actually sitting here and defending the “Catholicness” of the Kennedy family? Do you know nothing about them?
The Kennedy’s are “sewer trout”, every last one of them.
Yes, of course I do, and that is why I know that they were Catholic royalty, the most publicly church honored Catholics in America.
Don’t you know anything about them?
You really want to tell us who is not Catholic?
Did you kill any of your girlfriends after you got them pregnant? Did you use your office to hound people for years merely because you hated them? Did you drag a country into a decade long war? Do you cheat on your spouse at least five times a day? Do you date Nazis? Or gun molls?
Well as my Dad (RIP), another Irish Catholic, used to say:
A Kennedy is somebody who wants to give your money to the poor and get credit for doing it.
They were born, lived, died and were buried, as Catholic royalty.
Look at Ted Kennedy.
The Popes have always been there for Ted, from his first Communion by Pope Pius XII at age 7, to Pope Benedict XVI blessing him on his death bed in a letter in 2009, but he had to settle for a Cardinal to perform his first marriage and a Cardinal for his funeral.
This is Ted's Catholic funeral.
What to expect from the Communist Left in 2015: they’re gonna go all out in an attempt to paint Jeb Bush as conservative. Using both subtle and explicit means.
Their goal is for Bush to win the primaries, paving the way for Hillary or Warren in the general.
You’re missing my point.
We are still trying to figure out why you are saying that Ted Cruz is not “even remotely conservative”.
How so?
BMFL
True, they are Postmillennialists, but there is more to "Dominion Theology" than that. In keeping with their postmillennialism, they believe Premillennial Christians (who believe Christ will return BEFORE the millennial) have got it backwards, the world is NOT getting worse and worse, it is actually getting better and better. Yeah right.
Scripturally speaking, Dominionists are out in the weeds big time.
I was trying to be brief and then somewhat amusing.
I understand. When its a governor who apparently believes this stuff, and someone who wants to be president, i.e. Rick Perry, its gets beyond just being amusing. At least to me.
Opinions vary —
I find people that don’t know the first thing about a personal relationship with Jesus Christ or Life by the Spirit hysterically funny when they impute the specific elements of an incredibly diverse faith onto another person, that may or may not even have a genuine born again faith, based upon political speeches.
Not to mention the arrogance and condescension that produced the article referenced — that just has my sides splitting, I am laughing so hard...
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