Why Evangelicals Like Rick Santorum

Growing government, taking away freedoms, catering to lobbyists, hysterical warmongering, deference to the UN; what do these things--Santorum's true trademarks--have to do with Evangelical Christianity?

Most evangelicals are suckered in by Santorum's grandstanding on social issues because they are too ignorant to have developed ideas on economic policy, so social issues are all they have to go on. (This is not a criticism of them in particular; most people know very little about economics and other policy-related topics.)

Evangelicals think about politics in a very idealized, impractical way. They'd rather vote for Santorum, a corrupt lobbyist lover, based solely on the fact that he sounds like them in ideals, regardless of whether he can actually deliver the moral utopia he seems to promise. Santorum sweeps them off their feet, and captivates them in his little conservative fantasy world...and once elected, he deceives them into going to unnecessary war, wastes their money and votes to take away their freedom.

Santorum doesn't seem to understand that when he votes to grow government, he necessarily spreads secularism since all federal buildings are prohibited from featuring religious materials. The supreme court rulings to this effect are unlikely to be overturned any time soon. True cultural change must come from the bottom up, from evangelization and not from Santorum. America became more liberal during Santorum's tenure in Washington despite what he would have people believe.

Evangelicals are also brainwashed into supporting the military industrial complex via their support for what they think is Israel. Dispensationalism is a tragically flawed heresy that perverts a Bible verse into meaning that one must support imperial wars commandeered by war hawks and war profiteers. The Iraq war that Santorum pushed for and war with Iran he's presently pushing for come to mind.

To make matters worse, the idiot media is now "Palinizing" Santorum by attacking not his corruption, lobbyist relationships, record of growing government during the Bush era, nor his confusing illogical rationales for supporting the unconstitutional Lybia war, or trigger locks, but instead they attack his alleged conservative cultural background. Thus, evangelicals are provoked into defending him just as they were into defending Palin because they believe they share his views on moral issues and view him as one of them. They confuse defending their evangelical morality with defending him, and then it's a wash; its all over for them. They follow their pied piper off the cliff and fall to tyranny...and another war possibly with a draft which Santorum's adult kids probably wont have to fight in.

Huffington was Moonstruck by Gingrich

Strangely enough, Ariana Huffington, founder of the liberal Huffington Post, was moonstruck by Speaker Gingrich in the '90s. According to Politico

Back then, when Gingrich helped the GOP recapture the House and took on the Clinton administration as speaker, Huffington was one of his strongest supporters. “She was a big champion of the Newt Revolution"

Now, she is an Obama fan and her website is critical of Gingrich. She must now think she was chasing moonbeams back then.

Concerning Newt's dreams of a moon colony, it reveals that despite his strong ties with the establishment, employment with Freddie Mac and friendship with the Tofflers. Nevertheless, Newt does have some eccentric originality to him. He has always been chasing moonbeams, or moon dreams rather, and has always considered himself to be a savior of the environment and of education, which explains his sitting on the couch in a commercial about "climate change" with Pelosi and his private visit with Obama on education in 2009. Newt's originality isn't up to our tastes...

Herman Cain Loves Big Government

Herman Cain loves big government (after it leaves the US border).

Herman Cain doesn't focus much on foreign policy, and with good reason: his beliefs thereon conflict with his image as a pro-small government candidate.

When asked about the war in Libya, Herman Cain did a proverbial Rick Santorum impression and said that going to war there was right but that Obama hadn't done it in the right way--that Obama hadn't made the objective clear. This is another way of saying: "I also support Obama's unconstitutional war, but I'm going to try to get you dunderheads to believe that my policy would be substantially different from Obama's." Would a Cain-led no fly zone be all that different from an Obama one? Could it? Probably not, but we shouldn't have gone in to Libya regardless of policy employed there. Ron Paul, Gary Johnson, and Michele Bachmann are the only candidates to have condemned the unconstitutional Libya war; Gingrich was for it before he was against it. Romney seems to be itching for war according to his latest book.

Herman Cain has openly sought to affiliate himself with the raging globalist Henry Kissenger. Kissenger is the poster child for big government intervention in the form of the military, and perhaps no figure better represents the forces of internationalism than him. Hermain Cain's 9-9-9 plan may seem anti-establishment, but when it comes to foreign policy, he might as well be the neo-con Rick Santorum.

Rick Perry a Moneychanger and Hypocrite?

Rick Perry is the posterboy for a prayer event at Reliant Stadium in Houston on August 6th, that is slated to be "a solemn gathering of prayer and fasting for our country." We have begun to wonder whether the event is more about Rick Perry than about prayer.

Matthew 6:5-6 (NIV)

And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.

The question is whether Rick Perry is using the event to impress evangelical voters to kick off his anticipated presidential run, or simply to express solidarity with several thousand people in a stadium whom he has never met...or maybe, for the benefit of the doubt, Perry is just doing the event for the sake of doing it.

But, consider the one time when Jesus Christ used violence

Matthew 21:12-13 Jesus entered the temple courts and drove out all those who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves. “It is written,” he said unto them, “‘My house will be called a house of prayer,’ but you are making it a den of robbers.”

In the case of the moneychangers, they were using the temple for the sake of enriching themselves with money. From this we may conclude that nobody should use a house of worship for his own selfish enrichment. This enrichment could also pertain to political clout; and it seems Rick Perry will gain political clout among evangelicals from this event. Moreover, the hypocrites we mentioned earlier prayed loudly so that they could gain favor with men and thus enrich themselves politically.

Indeed, at the moment we cannot know the true motivation for Perry's prayer event, but we can be certain that Perry needs to be careful that he is not doing the event for the wrong reasons so that he won't be a hypocrite or moneychanger.

Supporting Ron Paul is Kosher

Despite what some would call Ron Paul's Israel Problem, one website, Americans for Israel, maintains that Ron Paul is the most pro-Israel presidential candidate although he supports cutting aid to Israel because he also supports cutting aid to Israel's surrounding Islamic rivals who altogether receive three times what Israel does.

The website itself seems a bit sparse though--and was probably created in 2008 for the specific purpose of drawing pro-Israel people to Ron Paul. Therefore this is not some well-known pro-Israel group that naturally decided to endorse Ron Paul. Nonetheless, there appears to be some support among presumably, predominantly pro-Israel Jews for Paul, with one Facebook group having 154 members on the day this was published.

The website also claims that withdrawing aid from Israel would allow it more reign in protecting itself from aggressors--without having to ask permission from the US.

The real question is whether tentative support from a US president is the only thing standing in the way of Islamic countries ganging up on and attacking Israel. Would Ron Paul have to pledge an alliance with Israel in order to deter a large-scale attack? Possibly not, since Israel has nukes galore.

Whether the viewpoints expressed by Americans for Israel make sense in light of these questions is for the analysts to decide, but said viewpoints nevertheless are thought provoking.

UPDATE 6-4-11
Walter Block has posted a neat summary of the benefits Ron Paul's policy of no foreign aid would bring to the state of Israel. The question is whether they make up for the loss in benefits from foreign aid.

One thing is for certain: unless Ron Paul can appeal to evangelical Christians who comprise the majority of the Christian Right, then he will be very limited in the primaries.

A Fecal Point in Sestak Campaign

"In the ad, Sestak compares cleaning up after his family dog Belle to cleaning up the economic mess that he says his GOP rival Pat Toomey and former President George W. Bush played a big part in creating."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/26/AR2010102600740.html

Hillary's plane taking up the runway: an allegory

Truth is stranger than fiction, and sometimes the real world provides deft allegories. Case-in-point: Hillary Clinton flies her enormous jet which is packed with her many entourage members to make a speech in Haiti. Ironically, her great fleet allegedly obstructed rescue planes from landing on the runway. This is a great allegory for nearly every backfiring scheme Democrats have come up with in the past century or so.

Thomas Sowell writes that the number of blacks living below the poverty line stopped decreasing after the institution of the Great Society. The Great Society was supposed to benefit blacks, not create among them a culture of dependence on Big Brother, one which may have locked many blacks in an 'easy poverty.' Even if moral hazzard associated with handouts did not harm blacks economically, the Great Society still seems to have failed ceteris paribus because it has not decreased the number of blacks living in poverty.

Individual savings have decreased since the Social Security scheme of FDR. Why save money for yourself when the government can do it for you and in a more complicated way?

What about Fannie & Freddie? Two GSEs meant to keep housing prices low end up directing funds into a housing bubble, thus enslaving new home-buyers to now-unaffordable homes. Strangely enough, now policy makers are propping up housing prices.

But perhaps what is most disturbing about Clinton's exploits is that she is obviously on a PR mission. "Look how sypathetic I look toward the masses, (although I'm really just getting in their way)." Such is the destiny of the ambitious Left-wing politician trying to save the world.