Christianist Election Apocalypse

The Christofascists are becoming increasingly hysterical over the prospect that Barack Obama might just eke out a reelection win and thereby  throw a major wrench in their agenda of infusing more of their hate and fear based religious dogma into the nation's laws.  These extremist recognize that Mitt Romney would be a willing tool in implementing their theocratic agenda simply because he would want to avoid a Christianist primary challenge in 2016 were he to be elected next week.  Some of their hysteria might almost be funny were it not for the fact that these religious fanatics are completely serious in their desire to subvert the U. S. Constitution and end all abortion, re-criminalize gays and uphold white Christianist privilege.  A piece in Religion Dispatches looks at the hysteria and tactics the enemies of freedom for all citizens are emplying.  Here are some excerpts:

The final stretch of the presidential campaign is bringing out the last-minute scramble for a miracle, whether it be undecided voters in a swing state breaking your candidate’s way or prodding the apathetic to the voting booth on November 6th.

Or, to put a different spin on the phenomenon: we’re now seeing the dumbest of religious appeals, the most craven partisan tactics, a dramatic spike in proof-texting the Bible to score political points, and dire prophecies.

Focus on the Family’s political arm is sending Iowa voters a flyer claiming that President Obama thinks “we’re no longer a Christian nation” (read: we were once a Christian nation but bwwaaahahahahahaha, my evil Islamo-socialist plan has worked!).

Obama is an oppressor of Christianity, in the view of the Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins, who tweeted that “#Obamacare seems aimed squarely at dismantling and/or silencing the family and the Church.”

Billy Graham—or, as many suspect, someone speaking on the 94-year-old evangelist’s behalf—put his name on an advertisement that reads, “I strongly urge you to vote for candidates who support the biblical definition of marriage between a man and woman, protect the sanctity of life, and defend our religious freedoms.”

The Christian Post, the subject of an intense investigation by Christianity Today (which was founded by the elder Graham), was also the venue for a Romney endorsement by Richard Land, who serves as the magazine’s executive editor.

Land, disgraced from his position as the Southern Baptist Convention’s “ethics” guru after admitting to plagiarizing racist rants about the Trayvon Martin case, broke his pledge not to endorse a candidate because “America is at a fork in the road and must choose between a President Barack Obama who wants to remake America in the model of a European welfare state and a Governor Mitt Romney who wants to restore a more economically vibrant and traditionally moral America.”

Anti-marriage equality crusader Bishop Harry Jackson, who is African American, urges readers to vote for Romney “as a statement of Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream.” While King was sitting in the Birmingham jail, Romney was tormenting boys with long hair at Cranbrook, and his Church was still 15 years away from lifting its ban on black men serving in the priesthood.

Pastor Robert Jeffress, who just a year ago endorsed Rick Perry over Romney in the Republican Primary, and called Mormonism a cult, is now telling pastors in Florida—even though he still thinks Mormonism is a cult—that “It’s time to stand up and push back against all the evil in our country.” He suggested that failing to go out to vote for Romney would be like being a pastor in Germany in the 1930s and failing to try to stop the Holocaust.

Here’s the reality: white evangelicals are an ever-shrinking proportion of the electorate; according to a recent Public Religion Research Institute poll, they make up 30% of those 65 and older, but just 9% of 18- to 29-year-olds. A recent Pew poll found that now the “nones” make up the same segment of the population (19%) as white evangelicals. And the younger the cohort studied, the more likely that a “none” is an atheist or agnostic. There’s no convincing the evangelical partisans, though.

That the GOP and Romney/Ryan are so beholden to such religious extremists and outright nutcases ought to terrify rational, thinking Americans.   If these people are the ones supporting Mitt Romney and the GOP, there isn't a much stronger argument to be found for voting Democrat and for Obama.