Rosamond Press

A Public Policy Polling (PPP) national survey conducted between February 20th and February 22nd of Republican voters, found that an astonishing 57 percent of Republicans want to dismantle the Constitution, and establish Christianity as the official national religion. Only 30 percent oppose making Christianity the national religion.

Although the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment clearly states that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion,” GOP voters want to cast aside that provision and impose Christianity as the official American religion.

While a number of red states have passed statutes forbidding the implementation of Islam-based sharia law in their states, Republicans apparently have no misgivings about turning the United States into a Christian theocracy. The poll’s crosstabs reveal that support for making Christianity the official religion is strongest among Mike Huckabee (94 percent), Rick Perry (83 percent), and Ben Carson (78 percent) supporters.

Former Rep. Michele Bachmann is very excited that the world may be coming to an end. Iran may be getting the bomb, and gay people are getting married these days, and all of this is wonderful news because it means Israel is going to be destroyed and there will be wars and plagues and famines and that means Jesus is going to come back to fly all the bestest Bachmann-approving-of Christians into heaven while her enemies get left to rot in whatever post-nuclear wasteland comes next. You think we are making this up. We are not making this up.

“We get to be living in the most exciting time in history,” she said, urging fellow Christians to “rejoice.””Jesus Christ is coming back. We, in our lifetimes potentially, could see Jesus Christ returning to Earth, the Rapture of the Church.”

It should be noted that yes, Michele Bachmann was until very recently a prominent member of Congress and is a special darling of the conservative right. It should also be noted her views on these matters bear more than a passing similarity to a Jim Jones or a David Koresh, though Bachmann considers the whole of the nation to be members of her delusional death cult.

“We need to realize how close this clock is to getting towards the midnight hour,” Bachmann said. “Barack Obama is intent, it is his number one goal, to ensure that Iran has a nuclear weapon.” […]After Bachmann said that Obama intends to “lift up the agenda of radical Islam,” Markell added that legal abortion and marriage equality for gays and lesbians are bringing about divine punishment on America.

“You are right,” Bachmann responded, lamenting that God will soon lift His “hedge of protection” over “pagan” America “and we will suffer the consequences as a result.”

That prominent members of one of our two national parties firmly believe Israel must be destroyed to bring about the second coming of Jesus Christ, and get genuinely excited by anything they see as potentially advancing this agenda, tends not to get much attention because it simply sounds too implausible to be real. We in America do not like to think of ourselves as being led by religious zealots who consider themselves harbingers of the end of the world; that sounds like other countries, perhaps, but not us. We are enlightened and rational people. We launch satellites, and have iPhones.

But it is real. Put a microphone in front of them and a cup of tea in one hand and they will tell you so. And the Michele Bachmanns of the party are so popular and so sought-out, in what we are now calling the tea party crowd, not in spite of their delusions of religious grandeur or conspiratorial visions of what their perceived opponents are plotting or how it ties into God’s plan for torturing or killing every last human on Earth that ever treated them badly, but because of those beliefs. It makes them Godly. Believing the president of the United States is a secret Muslim proves that the believer is Pure. Loving the Jews is a requirement rooted not in basic human decency but is a necessary price for a ticket to ride the sky-train, when the sky-train toots its heavenly horn and arrives at the platform, Jesus Himself conducting, on the eve of everything else going straight to Hell.

It is flagrantly obvious that the people most convinced that Iran is an irrational theocratic state whose leaders see themselves as religious prophets destined to destroy their enemies and elevate their own religion into global dominance over all others are leaders who consider themselves to be—precisely that. That Michele Bachmann thinks these things is not unusual. That Michele Bachmann could receive adulation among wide swaths of “the base” for her courage in saying such things should, however, cause all the rest of us to wet our pants in fear for the nation. We are a nation in which a great many people believe in their hearts that gay people getting rights are directly responsible for individual tornadoes, and that we will never run out of oil because God simply would not allow something that terrible to happen, and that the modern state of Israel holds value almost exclusively as a chip to be cashed when the time comes, a blood sacrifice to be made that will grant the offerers eternal salvation. This is not exaggeration. We are not making this shit up.

By Luciana Lopez

DES MOINES, Iowa, April 26 (Reuters) – Republican presidential hopefuls in Iowa and elsewhere have recently begun sounding a call to arms to Christian conservatives, describing what they say is an urgent threat to religious liberty.

Citing high-profile dust-ups over religious freedom bills in Indiana and Arkansas, the contenders are painting a vivid picture of faith under fire.

“In the past month, we have seen religious liberty under assault at an unprecedented level,” Senator Ted Cruz of Texas said on Saturday at a forum sponsored by the Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition outside Des Moines.

In both Indiana and Arkansas, bills aimed at protecting religious liberty were modified after critics, including a number of corporations, asserted the laws would allow discrimination against lesbians and gays.

On the campaign trail, Republican hopefuls are blasting the modifications.

“Corporate America needs to be careful,” Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal said on Saturday.

“We’ve got legislation in Louisiana to protect people of faith and of conscience.  Corporate America is not going to bully the governor of Louisiana,” he said, drawing loud applause.

Iowa traditionally draws early and intense campaigning by presidential aspirants because it is the first electoral contest in the long primary season. But candidates face a dilemma there: Do they emphasize the socially conservative principles that play well with Iowa’s more conservative Republican electorate? Or do they stress a more mainstream conservatism that might play better later in the campaign?

Gay marriage is a particularly thorny issue, especially with the U.S. Supreme Court set to hear oral arguments this week in a legal challenge to laws prohibiting same-sex unions.

Overall, 50 percent of Americans now support gay marriage, according to data from Reuters/Ipsos, with 34 percent opposing it and 16 percent unsure. Still, according to polling from the Pew Research Center, nearly 70 percent of white evangelicals oppose gay marriage, and in 2012, about 57 percent of Republican voters in the Iowa caucuses described themselves as evangelical Christians.

COURTING CONSERVATIVES

A win in Iowa, or even a high placement, gives a candidate more visibility as the race moves on to other states, but it is no guarantee of later success. In 2008 and 2012, the top spots in the Republican contest were taken by former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee and former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum, respectively, neither of whom went on to get the party’s nomination.

Still, Republicans hopefuls, including some familiar faces, remain eager to court Iowa conservatives.

“We are moving rapidly toward the criminalization of Christianity,” Huckabee said in conference call with conservative pastors organized by the Family Research Council, a Christian public policy organization. An audio recording of the call was obtained and posted online by Right Wing Watch, a progressive group that criticizes conservatives.

Huckabee picked up the thread again on Saturday.

“Let me be clear tonight: I’m not backing off because what I’m saying is true,” he said. His words were greeted with murmurs of “That’s right” from the crowd, along with strong applause.

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker echoed the warning. “We should be standing up for religious freedom,” he said at Saturday’s forum. “In America, we should be the shining star that says you should be able to practice your religion.”

Two prominent potential Republican contenders were missing at the Faith and Freedom gathering: Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush and New Jersey Governor Chris Christie. Both are perceived as being from the party’s more moderate wing. Bush has argued for comprehensive immigration reform, and Christie, as governor of New Jersey, ultimately opted not to appeal a court decision that legalized gay marriage in his state.

A more moderate stance, especially on gay marriage, may resonate particularly with young voters. Among 18-to-29-year-olds, according to Reuters/Ipsos, 76 percent now support gay marriage. Even among Republicans in that age group, same-sex marriage enjoys 51 percent support.

Raymond Starks, a 21-year-old student at Drake University who interned on Mitt Romney’s 2012 campaign, said on Saturday he favored same-sex marriage, although he also valued religious liberty.

San Antonio, Texas – Pastor John Hagee of the Cornerstone Church delivered an impassioned speech decrying the evils of welfare dependency. While prefacing his remarks with an acknowledgement of the need the disabled, infirm, and elderly have of receiving social support, he made it clear that he has little tolerance for able bodied individuals who are living off the taxes of the working people.

Pastor Hagee cited that statistic that the welfare population of the United States exceeds to population of Spain. He believes that many of these people do not actually need welfare and should instead reap the rewards of their actions according to Biblical  

Referring to 2 Thessalonians 3:10 “For even when we were with you, this we commanded you, that if any would not work, neither should he eat.”, he insists that such people as are found gaming the system must get off the proverbial couch and work. His comments are certainly well-intended even if they came across as somewhat derogatory. The problem is that the sectors of the economy which product mid to high wage income, have not recovered from the 2008 banking crisis.

The main sectors of the economy which have thrived are those producing low-wage jobs which is what makes it very difficult from even working people to make a living. Coupled with the disincentive that a person can fare better on welfare than they can to work, and the picture becomes clearer. Yes, people need to work, but the economy isn’t the rising tide lifting all the ships that it needs to be either.