… you’re a professor or a mainline Protestant. You’re doing Satan’s work. No, really.
… you’re a professor or a mainline Protestant. You are doing the work of the “Father of Lies” (and no, he doesn’t mean Rush Limbaugh). Â You really have to hear the loathing he packs into the phrase “smart people.”
 Audio here.
Can you imagine the outrage had it turned out - per impossibile - that Barack Obama had described the Catholic Church as a tool of Satan, the product of “vanity and pride,” and no longer “part of Christianity”? But I doubt Santorum will lose a single endorsement over this, or even be required to defend it.
h/t Political Animal.
Author: Mark Kleiman
Professor of Public Policy at the NYU Marron Institute for Urban Management and editor of the Journal of Drug Policy Analysis. Teaches about the methods of policy analysis about drug abuse control and crime control policy, working out the implications of two principles: that swift and certain sanctions don't have to be severe to be effective, and that well-designed threats usually don't have to be carried out.
Books:
Drugs and Drug Policy: What Everyone Needs to Know (with Jonathan Caulkins and Angela Hawken)
When Brute Force Fails: How to Have Less Crime and Less Punishment (Princeton, 2009; named one of the "books of the year" by The Economist
Against Excess: Drug Policy for Results (Basic, 1993)
Marijuana: Costs of Abuse, Costs of Control (Greenwood, 1989)
UCLA Homepage
Curriculum Vitae
Contact: Markarkleiman-at-gmail.com
View all posts by Mark Kleiman
This will cost him dearly as people find out about it, but let this not happen until after he wins the Michigan primary.
On the contrary, I think in terms of his immediate objective of assembling an Evangelical-Catholic coalition for the primaries, this quote is priceless. Mainline Protestants probably aren’t winnable for Santorum in any event. My impression is they tend to be the kind of establishment Republicans who are looking for a candidate who’s, well, presentable, and none of the non-Romneys fit the bill.
Of course the quote also is priceless for Dems should Santorum actually win the nomination. Every day that passes causes me to reduce my assessment of his potential vote in the fall. Right now I’d say he’s heading towards Mondale territory (41%).
Amen Ed.
And let’s hope this Nate Silver Easter Egg has real yolk:
http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/13/down-in-michigan-polls-romney-needs-to-find-his-base/#more-26063?pagewanted=all
That’s funny because the Evangelicals decided to support him about 2 months ago. Whoops!
Only the Evangelicals aren’t considered mainline, and realize his fatwa wasn’t aimed at them.
Do you really think that? I suspect that counter-Reformation Santorum thinks very little of evangelical Protestants.
I think conservative Catholics and Evangelicals both realize they need each other temporarily to complete the takeover, and can have it out with each other over dominance later on. Yeah, in his heart of hearts Santorum probably believes all Protestants are heretics who should be burned at the stake, and Evangelicals probably have internalized the Whore of Babylon stuff, but for the time being there seems to be a pretty remarkable truce in the war of words between the two sides.
Yep! The smart people are commin’ to get ya, an’ they’s gonna make your daugters take the pill. Be very AFRAID!
I’m reminded of Ken Kesey’s “American Creedo”: “The dumb is righter than the smart ’cause there’s more of us.” Santorum wants to put that idea to the test. Let’s hope the American people prove both Kesey and Santorum wrong.
Santorum seems close to being completely outside the tradition of American politics. Many religious conservatives simply act is if there is no tension between the Enlightenment and Christian politics. Santorum, however, is coming as close as an American politician can to saying “I am on a different team from Franklin and Jefferson,” while still being the preffered candidate of people who dress up in the 18th century costumes and bellow about how they are the ideological heirs of Franklin and Jefferson because they do not like the deficit!! Obamacare!!! teleprompters!!! born in Kenya and Indonesia at the same time!!!!
It is all very strange.
I liked how in his version of American history, we were good, moral people before ha-shatan, the Adversary came and corrupted us with changing sexual mores and legal access to abortion. Maybe I missed something, but as a black person I find this whole framework kind of offensive. I mean, as brilliant as our founding fathers were, a lot of them owned people. And while many of them recognized the moral evil of this, it remained a part of American life for quite some time. But I suppose that was all okay, seeing as how it was in keeping with those Judeo-Christian values we keep hearing about. After all, as evil as slavery was, it was Biblical.
He’d be hard-pressed to lose many endorsements…. because he’d hit ‘zero’ in short order.
The Lord has again shown favor to Barack Obama. Rick Santorum has accused him of having a phony theology, something he can be tasked to explain again and again if he gets the nomination. Getting opponents like this is a sign that Divine Providence intends to keep Pres. Obama in office for another four years.
I thought The Lord was too busy with fuhbawl and basketball games to be bothered with politics…nevertheless, I’m reminded of what Barney Frank said recently about Newtie: the Democrats have not been sufficiently pious in the eyes of God to have Newt as the opponent. I have to say the same thing about the Rickster. If it were to be the plot in a novel, you’d stop reading as soon as that element appeared.
Some non-Americans think that the Lord’s devotion to football is overstated: http://humor-image.com/this-touchdowns-for-you-jesus/