Hoping for a born again campaign? GOP field hits Iowa

Don't get me wrong, it isn't often I agree with Newt Gingrich, but his response to Occupy: "Go get a job right after you take a bath," was spot-on. Having said that, however, the idea of Gingrich courting evangelicals in Iowa at a moral values forum is like Nadya Suleman wanting a spokesperson gig with Planned Parenthood.

There was the usual hard-right banter, with candidates set in stone against abortion, same sex marriage, laws restricting prayer in school, and laws preventing ministers from endorsing candidates from the pulpit. The usual litany from today's GOP that will ensure I never become a registered Republican.

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Newt Gingrich says there is a shift toward secularism in America that is a disaster, and businessman/Baptist minister/political hopeful Herman Cain wants to change the provisions in the tax code that limit the involvement of churches in politics.

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For all the Republican hopefuls, I would remind them that, no matter how fucking hard they hope or wish, the United States of America was not founded on Christian principles. It's called the Treaty of Tripoli (or more specifically, the Treaty of Peace and Friendship between the United States of America and the Bey and Subjects of Tripoli of Barbary), the oldest continuously enforced treaty in the United States, and it flat says as much, in plain damn English, right in the opening sentence of Article 11 (see above).

Oh, and the whole secular disaster Gingrich is so concerned with? I would remind him that, no matter how fucking hard he hopes or wishes, it's called free will, and the Crusades are over. Have been for quite a while now.

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As for Herman Cain, I fell completely out of any interest at all once he made the remark that God told him to run for President. I'm personally starting to wonder just how many people God tells to run for President each election cycle.

As disdainful as I often find ministers doubling as businessmen, nothing beats a minister doubling as a politician. I know there is really nothing preventing either of those scenarios, nor stopping someone from doing all three, but how many sides of one fence should someone be allowed to play and still be taken seriously?

Ministers wanting to be businessmen, and vice versa, is what eventually mutated into the concept of the megachurch. The megachurch then decides that if they can't convert 'em the old fashioned way, and the 21st century bells and whistles that come along with "contemporary Christianity" aren't putting butts in pews, then they might as well go political.

That's where the bullshit starts. Which Herman Cain wants the tax code provisions changed- the businessman, the minister, or the candidate? For all these "rule of law" conservatives that seem to be coming out of the woodwork, why won't any of them say the rule needs to be changed, but until then, enforcement must prevail?

I understand that a majority of the voters in the 2008 Iowa caucuses called themselves "born again," and if you are going to throw down in Rome, you'd better gladiate like the Romans, but am I the only person asking why, oh fucking why, are these people the ones setting the pace for the GOP Presidential nomination?

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