Thursday, November 09, 2006

Political blood thicker than Holy Water

Here's part of Katherine Kersten's column on Thursday praising Michele Bachmann, the winning candidate in Minnesota's Sixth District:

One secret to Bachmann's success was her vast "family" of volunteers, she said. "The volunteers have been a pure joy," she told me Wednesday. "We had so many people flood in that we ran out of phones to do our 'get-out-the-vote' calls, and had to go out and buy more phones. One 12-year-old girl made over 800 calls. A home-school mom came in with her five children and said, 'Put us to work.' A couple I've known since I was 16 took two days off of work to do door-knocking. In one day, they knocked on 146 doors."

Despite this kind of support, Bachmann found herself constantly swimming upstream against what she perceives as the religious bigotry of some of her political adversaries. "I was attacked repeatedly for my religious faith, and the media was a willing accomplice," she said. "I'm really disturbed by the media's lack of tolerance and understanding for the belief of a committed Christian."

A campaign low came when bloggers, and then some in the media, suggested that Bachmann's church regards the pope [shouldn't that be Pope, Katie?] as the Antichrist. "It was part of a political trick to convince pro-life Catholics not to vote for me," she asserts.

But she credits the people of the Sixth District for seeing through such tactics. "Catholics didn't buy it," she said. "They know we're not going to refight the Reformation [in 2006]. It was part of an effort to drive a wedge between people of different religious denominations" -- a ploy she finds reprehensible.

In fact, there have been questions raised recently about Bachmann's church's belief about the true identity of the pope [Spot's not a Catholic]. The Wisconsin Lutheran Synod is pretty upfront about its conclusion that the pope is, in fact, the antichrist. [Spot's not a devil worshipper, either]. Spotty imagined a telephone conversation between Michele and Katie about that here.

So Michele, it's reprehensible when somebody raises your goofy religious doctrine in attacking your candidacy, but your attacking somebody else's religous doctrine is fine? (Boys and girls, just put the search terms "Michele Bachmann Islam" into the Google.

And you Katie. You have written on many occasions about how important your Catholic faith is to you. But it doesn't bother you that Michele's church thinks that the leader of your church is the personification of evil? When somebody calls George Bush evil Katie, you go ballistic. Wait. . . . There's a point in there somewhere.

It's fine to drag religion into the public sphere when it supports your conservative political goals, but not when it serves contrary goals or demonstrates your hypocrisy? Is that your point, Katie? My, those are words to live by.

So to sum up, grasshoppers and grasshopperettes, Katie is offended to be thought of as an infidel by a Muslim, but is ok with being thought of as a devil worshipper by a Lutheran, because the Lutheran is a Republican.

Your assignment, boys and girls, is to write a one-page essay on the value of the separation of church and state based on the last paragraph.

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