Kathleen Parker is one of the few rational conservative pundits and, not surprisingly, she's not thrilled with the prospect of Rick Perry as the potential GOP presidential nominee. As I've made clear, I view Perry as an extremist and nutcase who make actually make Chimperator Bush look fairly bright. Yes, that's a frightening reality, but such is the insanity of today's Republican Party. Here are highlights from Parker's latest column in the Washington Post:
Rick Perry’s rapid lead over previous Republican front-runner Mitt Romney was predictable. But it is not a good sign for Republicans hoping to reclaim the White House and further highlights the crucial battle within GOP circles: Who is the godliest of us all?
That’s the mirror-mirror question for Republicans. Forget charisma, charm, intelligence, knowledge and that nuisance, “foreign policy experience.” The race of the moment concerns which candidate is the truest believer.
This was always a tough hurdle for Romney, whose Mormonism is reflexively distrusted by Southern evangelicals. Even so, in the absence of a better candidate, Romney had a fighting chance to win his party’s support. Then came Perry.
Talk about a perfect-storm, composite candidate. Combine Elmer Gantry’s nose for converts, Ronald Reagan’s folksy confidence and Sarah Palin’s disdain for the elites — and that dog hunts. Perry doesn’t just believe, he evangelizes. . . . . If you’re Romney, Perry is a nightmare that’s still there in the morning. If you’re Barack Obama, maybe not so much?
That we are yet again debating evolutionary theory and Earth’s origins — and that candidates now have to declare where they stand on established science — should be a signal that we are slip-sliding toward governance by emotion rather than reason. But it’s important to understand what’s undergirding the debate. It has little to do with a given candidate’s policy and everything to do with whether he or she believes in God.
If we are descended of some blend of apes, then we can’t have been created in God’s image. If we establish Earth’s age at 4.5 billion years, then we contradict the biblical view that God created the world just 6,500 years ago. And finally, if we say that climate change is partly the result of man’s actions, then God can’t be the One who punishes man’s sins with floods, droughts, earthquakes and hurricanes. If He wants the climate to change, then He will so ordain, and we’ll pray more.
Perry knows he has to make clear that God is his wingman. And this conviction seems not only to be sincere, but also to be relatively noncontroversial in the GOP’s church . . . . . And also why he probably can’t win a national election, in which large swaths of the electorate would prefer that their president keep his religion close and be respectful of knowledge that has evolved from thousands of years of human struggle against superstition and the kind of literal-mindedness that leads straight to the dark ages.
Faith and reason are not mutually exclusive, but Perry makes you think they are.
As a thinking, I like to think rational American, Rick Perry scares the Hell out of me and makes me worry for the future of the nation.
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