Surviving Iowa 2016

So this is a thing that happened, and tends to every four years.

Everybody gets hyped up about Iowa, skews the results of the caucusing to fit their narratives, and quickly march onto New Hampshire to skew the results of THAT ever further.

The only things we should note from these early caucuses and primaries are who drops out of the races when it becomes obvious they don't stand a chance to even show up at the summer conventions as a cover band playing outside the arenas. In this case, the Democrats lose Martin O'Malley - who clearly wasn't going to steal anything away from Hillary and Bernie - and the Republicans lose Mike Huckabee - who lost the evangelical support to the likes of Trump (?) and Cruz (!).

I am surprised in Huckabee's failure in particular: in an election cycle in which the uber-religious voters have more sway than ever before, Huck had lost their interest to fresher Bible-thumpers like Cruz. It could be that the anti-gay, Culture-War message that was Huck's patented formula didn't contain enough bile towards immigrants, or towards the Establishment that Huckabee became a part of during his interim as a Fox Channel show host. This was a guy who in 2012 polled best among GOP candidates versus Obama, yet refused to run: either knowing Obama really wasn't that weak the way the Far Right kept painting him as, or else he got complacent about being that Fox Not-News host. Hindsight hurts a lot (for him, as an Obama acolyte I couldn't be happier)...

On the bright side, this can be the last time I mention this fraud of a preacher/politician who threatened the Separation of Church and State and whose hypocrisy about Christianity became insulting.

As for the Democratic race, it's pared down to the bare essential: a campaign between the Centrist forces that have led the Democrats to the White House in 1992 and 2008 - Hillary - and the Progressive, socialist forces that have been rising up against the outrages of Wall Street and income inequality - Bernie. O'Malley may have been an impressive candidate on paper, but so were Hillary and Bernie, and we've seen before that Democratic voters prefer transformative figures like Obama over "traditional" political figures like Biden in 2008. And despite the heated rhetoric on Twitter and social media between Bernie Bros and I'mWithHill forces, the two sides are amicable at least (knowing who the real enemy will be after summer) regarding who can win their primaries.

In terms of the "big" winners last night: There was always a possibility Ted Cruz could win in Iowa because he speaks the language of the Social conservatives who dominate that state, but there's no guarantee he'll win over the more Economic conservative base that holds sway in New Hampshire. Trump will remain Trump, as he still holds impressive polling leads everywhere else: the argument was going to be if the polling numbers matched the reality at the ballot boxes, to which the answer is "Mostly accurate." Rubio is being hailed as a winner in the coveted Third Place, placing better - at 23 percent - than the polling suggested and positioning himself as the Establishment standard bearer - for now - that the anti-Trump anti-Cruz forces can rally to.

I still can't see Rubio lasting the race: his flaws will get more notice now, New Hampshire may be a stumbling block as Kasich has been polling well there.

The interesting thing for me is turnout: in 2012 barely anybody showed, but 2016 Iowa had near-record attendance. The enthusiasm of the party base is higher than expected, and bodes ill for the Republican Establishment as the ANTI-Establishment candidates (Trump/Cruz) are the ones likely driving that uptick.

Also, I watched a great episode of the X-Files last night. I might link my review of it here later.

Just remember kids: For the LOVE OF GOD don't vote Republican.

Brief NSFW Post About Huckabee's Invoking the Holocaust to Fearmonger Over a Treaty With Iran

F-ck you, Mr. Huckabee.

A true man of Christ would accept peace as an option.  An honest man looking to lead our nation would view diplomacy as a virtue.  A leader would accept working with our allies abroad towards stabilizing the world.

Only a sick bastard would use the Holocaust to fearmonger.  Only an idiot would think that making a treaty with Iran that ENDS their nuclear weapons program could possibly lead to another round of genocide.

F-ck you, Mr. Huckabee.  This is the last thing I am ever going to write about you.

Huckabee Fails At Congeniality

Remember, my earlier chats about Mike Huckabee was how, out of all the other Republican candidates for 2016, he alone has the skills to fake Congeniality similar to Reagan to pull off a campaign in a Passive-Positive character style.  A style that would attract voters turned off by the Active-Negative types dominating the party.

Well, change that "has" in that first paragraph into a "had".

Huckabee just blew up his Congenial persona with bad timing, worse instincts, and horrific views on rape and gender roles.

This originally came out in February of this year, only now hitting the airwaves (from Raw Story):

Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee joked that he wished he was young again — so he could pretend to be transgender and watch girls shower in locker rooms.

During his speech at the 2015 National Religious Broadcasters Convention in February, Huckabee attacked laws to allow transgender students to use facilities that correspond to their gender identity...

“...For those who do not think that we are under threat, simply recognize that the fact that we are now in city after city watching ordinances say that your seven-year-old daughter, if she goes into the restroom cannot be offended and you can’t be offended if she’s greeted there by a 42-year-old man who feels more like a woman than he does a man,” the former Arkansas governor said.

“Now I wish that someone told me that when I was in high school that I could have felt like a woman when it came time to take showers in PE,” Huckabee continued. “I’m pretty sure that I would have found my feminine side and said, ‘Coach, I think I’d rather shower with the girls today.’ You’re laughing because it sounds so ridiculous doesn’t it?...”

It is not the first time that Huckabee has joked about pretending to be transgender to shower with girls. He made similar comments after California enacted a law to allow transgender students to use school facilities consistent with their gender identity...

Transgender or gender identity issues are in the news right now because of former Olympian Bruce Jenner changing body and identity to Caitlyn.  But it's interesting to note how Huckabee has been like this - insensitive to gender identity as an issue - for months now (and that his Republican audience seems to find it funny).

The response to Huckabee's joke hasn't been happy or laughing.  Part of the problem is the setup: he's talking about being a perv wanting to watch girls shower.  This is supposed to be a guy preaching - literally - about sin and naughty thoughts, and he's indulging in that stuff.

Even if he's trying to phrase it as "oh if I were back in high school," he's saying it today as a man in his fifties.  He's coming across as a dirty old man lusting - yes, lusting - after school girls.  Even "free-minded" libruls have a few problems with that scenario.

His joke is made as an attempt to fear-monger as well: "Oh no watch out, guys claiming to be women are gonna sneak into your women's bathrooms and abuse your girls."  As fear-mongering goes, it shows lack of understanding:  transgender identities are not a joke, and there's been states with active transgender laws in place that have NOT reported the things Huckabee rails against.  That lack of understanding undermines Huckabee's own attempts at Congeniality.  It's a trait that requires some level of empathy for others, and it's a trait that requires self-deprecation rather than judgmental attitude.

This is one-half of the problem.  The other half doesn't involve his lackwit sense of humor but his poor judge of character involving the Duggars.

It's come out recently that the "reality" stars of a television show - 19 Kids and Counting - preaching "family values" were covering up for one of their older son Josh who as a teenager sexually molested younger girls.  Including his own sisters.  With lingering questions about how long he's really been at it...

The Duggars were major figures in the "pro-family" movement known as Quiverfull.  The movement has been documented as an ideology that imposes a nasty patriarchal mindset on entire families, the kind of environment that would encourage this type of abuse.

This scandal became a quick embarrassment to the Republican Party because Josh Duggar was a rising political figure in the Religious Right groups.  Not a lot of GOP politicos wanted to discuss the matter much... except for Huckabee, who has been a close ally of the Duggars and their ilk for years.  From Olivia Nuzzi at the Daily Beast:

...Nevertheless, Huckabee was prepared to forgive Duggar’s sins. “No purpose whatsoever is served by those who are now trying to discredit Josh or his family by sensationalizing the story,” he wrote. “Good people make mistakes and do regrettable and even disgusting things...”

...Given Huckabee’s evidently low bar for what constitutes forgivable behavior, it’s somewhat perplexing that, as a public figure, he has chosen to attack lots of people who have not admitted to or been accused of sex crimes of any nature—like President Obama: guilty of “stomping on Christians”; gays who are trying to “criminalize Christianity”; Beyoncé and Jay Z for morally bankrupting our society with their sexy music and dancing...

Nuzzi's article also mentions how as governor of Arkansas Huckabee went to bat for a convicted rapist to get paroled despite the protests of the victims, only to have said rapist go on to rape (and this time KILL) once freed.

This points to a world-view, a set of consistent actions, where Huckabee showed little interest or gave much value to the words, rights, or safety of victimized women.  This is not a happy, fuzzy world-view.  There is nothing Congenial about ignoring rape or sexual assault.

Because here's the problem with Huckabee and the other defenders of Josh Duggar's crimes, and of the crimes his parents committed through inaction and then intentional coverup: they are protecting the sexual predator - that is exactly what Josh is - at the expense of the true victims - his own sisters and other young girls - of his crimes.  They have valued the life of the man - this molester, this monster - over that of his own sisters (dear Mr. and Mrs. Duggar: YOUR OWN DAUGHTERS!  This the value you place upon them?!).

And Huckabee still acts that way: the man is more important than the victims of that man.

I've been making parody bumper stickers for 2016 campaigns this week.  Tonight I've made one that is NO LAUGHING MATTER:

Predicting Character: The Hubris of Huckabee

Just to mention, the inevitable jumping-in of Mike Huckabee into the GOP primaries happened.  Inevitable in that he'd been making the rounds at the key states, making noises about starting up funding efforts, making wildly inaccurate accusations about the godless heathens dancing to Beyonce.

He's been mentioned on this blog several times before.  And on several occasions I've made the observation that among the social conservative wingnuts running for the highest office - the likes of Santorum, Cruz, Palin, others - Huckabee is the one that can be the most credible threat to win the nomination.

He made a serious run in 2008 that got him in third behind McCain and Romney, and Huckabee did a serious job weakening Romney's standing among the Far Right religious voters.

That he didn't run against Mitt in 2012 was a slight surprise: against the faux purity of plastic ideology that Romney offered, Huckabee was a genuine Bible-thumping wingnut that the GOP wingnut crowd could back.  The thing is, Huckabee may buy into religious dogma but he's not completely blinded by political ideology: he could see the political landscape in 2012 still favored Obama, and likely didn't want to ruin his reputation on a doomed effort.  Still, he was the one who polled well enough against Obama to have been a real chance for the Republicans to take the White House then.

Why I need to re-address my views on Huckabee now, since I've already got my appraisals from 2008 and 2012 to verify how he'll do for 2016, is that this time I'm also looking at previewing / predicting the Character traits that Huckabee likely brings with him.  Using Professor Barber's system of uncovering the candidate's world-view, I hope to establish just how much of an Active-Negative Huckabee could be sitting in the Oval Office.

Pulling back up the brief preview I wrote earlier this year from his appearance at the Iowa Suck-Up Extravaganza:

Mike Huckabee - Governor, Arkansas
Positives: Populist political figure from a strongly conservative political region (Southeast).  Can govern.  Knows how to campaign in a Congenial style.  Remained a well-known figure on the national stage - by being on Fox Not-News as a pundit - after his failed primary campaigning in 2008.  He polled well as a possible candidate in 2012 (and showed enough awareness to tell it wasn't going to be a good election cycle for Republicans and stayed out of it).  Has legitimate religious conservative cred (ordained Baptist minister).  Can not only pander to the Tea Party base, he can do so without looking like it.
Negatives: Not exactly trusted by the anti-tax crowds still dominant in the backrooms of the GOP leadership (which is ridiculous as GOP dogma is too firmly obsessed with tax-cutting for anyone to violate that rule).  Has been away from elected office long enough for people to forget any good stuff he'd done as governor.  His time as a fear-monger on Fox Not-News will turn away moderate voters.  His early campaigning comments - going after "family values" issues and insulting Beyonce (?!) - are not exactly endearing him to any younger voters.  And that's not even going into legitimate scandals - granting clemencies to violent offenders who promptly killed (again), a son who killed a stray dog under obscure circumstances - that can become millstones in a national campaign.  Worst of all, Huckabee's advocacy of his religious beliefs - his failure to even respect the No Religious Test requirement IN THE CONSTITUTION ITSELF - threatens the sanctity of Separation of Church and State.
Chances: While he won't get the deep-pocket backers the way Jeb Bush (or even Mitt if Romney decides to make one more try) will, Huckabee has a high chance to use his charm and campaign skills to make a serious go at the nomination.
Character Chart: I stated earlier how the Republican Party is dominated by Active-Negatives and has an Active-Negative platform, yet needs a Passive-Positive candidate to appeal to regular voters.  Huckabee can present himself as a Passive-Positive better than any other candidate... but he's so Active-Negative with his strict religious convictions that he'll likely lean that way.

There are different ways a President can be an Active-Negative, but the one trait that type shares is the "I Must" mindset of a hidebound ideology.  As in, "I must do this thing because it is the only way to do it and I am the only one who knows how."  This is the Uncompromising trait that Barber wrote about in his studies on Presidential Character.  Lyndon Johnson, Nixon, Wilson, Hoover, Andrew Jackson... each of them with different world-view backgrounds yet focused on the same unbending agendas.  Where LBJ's Uncompromising habit came from his need to succeed as the best, where Nixon's came from his need to prove himself in crisis, where Hoover's came from the unbending logic of an engineer, they all ended up in the same place: inflexibility regarding policy solutions that ended in disasters.

Of the previous Active-Negatives, Huckabee shares most with Woodrow Wilson, the Idealist among Presidents.  Wilson's idealism was a self-assured righteousness, not of faith but of politics.  It was that idealism that drove much of his progressive agenda but also led to pushing too hard for a peace platform in the wake of World War I that ended up isolating the United States in the worst possible way (not to mention various civil liberties violations like the Palmer Raids).

Huckabee's idealism is tied directly to his Christian faith.  Unlike most of the other Republican candidates, Huckabee is not a hardened fiscal conservative (although he'll sign any tax cut bill a GOP Congress will send to his desk) that the Establishment types would prefer.  He seems to genuinely come from the wing of the GOP that takes churching and proselytizing serious.  From the Washington Monthly article by Steven Waldman:

...I met Huckabee in the 2000s when I was running a multifaith religion website called Beliefnet. Huckabee was making the rounds promoting his efforts to encourage healthy eating. He was charming, reasonable, smart, and funny—conservative, to be sure, but empathetic and appealing. During his underfinanced campaign in 2008, he proved himself to be a far better candidate than John McCain. In a party that’s forever searching for the next Ronald Reagan, he’s the closest to the Gipper in temperament than anyone else out there...
...He could have energized religious conservatives while seeming hopeful to the rest of the population...

I know that Waldman's comparing Huckabee to Reagan should be a sign that Huckabee could well be a Passive-Positive - indeed, the one character type that could appeal to a broad range of voters at a time when all we have running are Active-Negatives - but then Waldman notes how Huckabee went and sold his soul:

Then he got a Fox News TV show. He evolved into an uninteresting, standard-issue religious-right pundit. He repeatedly said that Obama grew up in Kenya. He defended Todd “Legitimate Rape” Akin. He champions David Barton, who argues that the Founding Fathers did not believe in separation of church and state. He even mocks Michelle Obama’s healthy-eating efforts, even though being the Biggest Loser (in terms of pounds, not votes) was his claim to fame once upon a time...

It's not so much that Huckabee went and re-branded himself as a Huckster.  It's that Huckabee saw an opportunity to make money and still stand on his reputation as a Moral-Majority Republican.  It's kind of a horrifying thought: that he not only got to sell snake-oil as a fear-mongerer, he somehow got to keep his self-image of a true believer whenever he looked himself in a mirror: the worst of both worlds.

Thing is, Huckabee didn't sell much of himself to Fox Not-News.  He had always been that fervent a "religious-right pundit".  Defending Barton - fake historian - over the issue of Separation of Church And State wasn't a new thing: Huckabee spoke against the precedents of Separation of Church and State years ago.  To the flashback machine of my blog:

...Please note sir, that your definition of what God is and what God wants, as a Baptist, is going to be different from even your fellow Christians, be they Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Calvinist, Reform, etc.

Please note Mr. Huckabee that your desire to rewrite the Constitution to reflect *your* point-of-view on God's Will, and it's only *your* will by the by, is going to scare the crap out of every other person who doesn't preach and pray to God the same way you do.  (add-on: and that includes fellow Christians)

Sir, you may be preaching thinking that you want to convert this nation from its seemingly godless ways, but rest assured we Americans are more driven by our faith and our acceptance of God moreso than any other Western nation. There is no need to make the Secular Law of the Land to mirror the Law of Faith. If you do, if you persist, you're going to find more people bickering and arguing over the Law of Faith the same as they bicker and argue over the Secular Law...

Huckabee hasn't changed since 2008.  The only thing's that changed is that Huckabee is more rigid in his denouncements of the "liberal" godlessness threatening Christians.  His claim that gay marriage will "criminalize Christianity" is just one big proof of how his fear-mongering has moved from being a smiley happy preacher to a dark doom-and-gloom judge of us all.

If we go into a more detailed biography - there are several in print, but one from the New Yorker in 2010 may help best - we can see the Uncompromising religious idealism of the man:

When Mike Huckabee was born, in 1955, the mores and values of Christianity seemed indistinguishable from the mores and values of the country. Growing up, Huckabee assumed that everyone was Christian, and in Hope, Arkansas—which is also Bill Clinton’s home town, though the two politicians did not become acquainted until adulthood—he was not far off. His family was not deeply religious, but his mother, Mae, took Huckabee and his sister to Sunday school every week, where the preacher would “literally scare the hell” out of him. “I grew up in a culture where everybody went to church but nobody took it that seriously,” Huckabee told me one afternoon a few months ago, drinking tea on the sunporch of his house in North Little Rock...

...When Huckabee was fifteen, he encountered an alternative. A young couple in his neighborhood offered Bible study at their home on Wednesday nights, and these meetings changed the way he saw his place in the universe. “For them, Christianity was not a cultural expression—it was a personal relationship with God,” he said. “It wasn’t about behavior.” He was attracted to the intimacy and depth of this vision, and to the couple’s emphasis on love rather than fear. "Evangelical essentially means people who have a belief in the authority and veracity of the Bible,” Huckabee said, “but who also believe that the Bible is about good news..."

...In some ways, Huckabee seems like a promising candidate for 2012: a squeaky-clean family man and bona-fide Christian who loves to talk. His communication is folksy but fluid; he never seems flummoxed, like George W. Bush, or befuddled, like John McCain, or unprepared, like Sarah Palin. “If we’re running a race against their most articulate guy,” Steve Schmidt, John McCain’s former campaign manager, told me, referring to President Obama, “we should put our most articulate guy. Huckabee’s that guy...”

This was in 2010.  Other than the change in messaging from hope and love to "war on faith" fear-mongering, there remains the constant of Huckabee's religious convictions.  It may not be a "fundamentalist" form of faith, but it's still an "evangelical" absolutism that few other Republicans can even fake.

It's that religious absolutism that made Huckabee free a lot of state prisoners who found out quick that professing conversion to faith as a quick ticket to paroles.  It's that same religious absolutism that will make him reject the growing public consensus that gay marriage is not a threat to heteros.  It's that religious absolutism that has convinced him that there should be Religious Tests and religious-based laws governing the nation, despite the Constitution and the proof of history that such laws were dangerous.  

Huckabee may have as a personality the Congeniality skills that makes him likable, and approachable among the lower-class citizenry that the other Republican candidates can't abide.  But he's an Idealist who won't bend on matters of personal faith that will dictate his public actions that will affect the rest of us.  That puts him in the Active-Negative category as much as the con artists making up the tax-cut pro-business Establishment candidates facing him in the primaries.

He's simply not a sane alternative to the likes of Cruz or Walker or Jeb or Rubio or any of the others.  In some ways he's worse: he's driven by a belief in God that isn't humble or accepting, it's demanding and inflexible.  It borders on hubris, a form of excessive pride that puts a man above others, making himself a god.  Huckabee may think of himself as God's messenger, but he's not: he's his own.  Hence the hubris, hence the pride.

And the Bible is pretty strict about what pride brings about.  Proverbs 16:18.

In This Case, the March Of History Goes Forward, Thank God

Yes, yesterday's SCOTUS ruling killing off voting rights was a huge bummer.

Today, the Supreme Court rulings - in separate decisions - that the federal DOMA and California's Prop 8 were unconstitutional turned into a major gain for civil rights.

In truth, the SCOTUS rulings are not a final say on the matter.  Overturning DOMA meant civil unions were possible and that states that passed same-sex marriage laws could uphold them, it didn't grant gay marriage rights across the nation.  And the Prop 8 decision was that the persons who brought suit to the Supreme Court - third-party groups that backed the referendum, not the state of California itself - did not have legal standing to do so.

Still. This is a great day to be Pro-People.  Play on, Don Coates:

I haven't read any of my fellow writers yet, but I did want to take a moment to say how important this moment is in the war against inequality. I was tempted to say "social inequality" but in America, there simply is no real way to separate the social, the political and the economic. When the larger country decided to stand aside as South Carolina went about the business of disenfranchising half its citizenry, the weapon was political, but the implications were economic and social. With no access to the franchise, black people lacked the means to protect their wealth. The poverty of wealth which befell them then reinforced their status as social pariahs, and their status as social pariahs reified (sp?) the racist justifications for their disenfranchisement and the inglorious cycle was complete...
It must never be forgotten that in America, the right to marry is the right to protect one's family. Certainly the pictures of same-sex couples embracing and hugging warm the heart and are a powerful weapon in country that prides itself on fairness...
The state repossessing a couple's wealth because it finds them icky, is wholly unjust. It recalls a particularly horrible aspect of slavery--the assault on the families of people deemed to be outside the law. There is a particular war here, which better people than me can speak to. But power is at the core of the long war which began sometime in the mid-17th century with the passage of the first slave codes. The prohibitions against same-sex marriage are not simply about witholding the right to be pretty in a dress or dashing in a tux (though I would deny no one their day.) It is about ensuring that only certain kinds of people, and certain kinds of families, are able to amass power, and with that power, influence over the direction of our society...
It is wrong to strip people of wealth because you are bigot. It is wrong to strip people of the right to name their caretakers because you are afraid. It is wrong to make war on people because you can not get over yourself. And though today we may say that we have advanced, through much of this country, the wrong continues unabated...

The fight's not over, I'll agree on that point.  But this is akin to winning Gettysburg: there may be another two years of war but the end - marriage equality - is in sight.  And as we advance on these rights, making them stronger and making our nation stronger, we can keep fighting for all the other rights - the right to vote, the right to earn a fair wage, the right to live healthy - that are self-evident (Yup, I'm enjoying that phrase).

So let the celebrating begin!

Yeah, that's right.  Even the heteros can gay-marry now.  Deal with it, Mr. Huckabee.

Huckabee, please read this

Regarding statements Huckabee has made about his plans to amend the Constitution: HOLY BLEEP

Dear Mr. Huckabee, please do me the pleasure of reading these tidbits out aloud:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. This is known as the First Amendment, part of the Bill of Rights.

Article Six of the Constitution has this paragraph: The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.
James Madison: The latent causes of faction are thus sown in the nature of man; and we see them everywhere brought into different degrees of activity, according to the different circumstances of civil society. A zeal for different opinions concerning RELIGION, concerning government, and many other points, as well of speculation as of practice; an attachment to different leaders ambitiously contending for pre-eminence and power; or to persons of other descriptions whose fortunes have been interesting to the human passions, have, in turn, divided mankind into parties, inflamed them with mutual animosity, and rendered them much more disposed to vex and oppress each other than to co-operate for their common good.
Please also read this, sir: the Massacre during St. Bartholomew's Day in France, in which the Protestants got screwed over simply because they butter their Jesus bread upside down.
Please also read this, sir: Cromwell's Calvinist conquest of Catholic Ireland, in which the Catholics got screwed over simply because they butter their Jesus bread rightside up. Please note sir, the overwhelming history of religious wars even among fellow Christians.
Please note, sir, how the Founding Fathers were descendants of those who fled Europe due to religious persecution, such as the Pilgrims of Plymouth, the Catholics who settled in Maryland, the Quakers who fled to Pennsylvania. Which was why they went out of their way to insist NO RELIGIOUS TEST be applied to government duties and oaths.

Please note sir, that your definition of what God is and what God wants, as a Baptist, is going to be different from even your fellow Christians, be they Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Calvinist, Reform, etc.

Please note Mr. Huckabee that your desire to rewrite the Constitution to reflect *your* point-of-view on God's Will, and it's only *your* will by the by, is going to scare the crap out of every other person who doesn't preach and pray to God the same way you do.

Sir, you may be preaching thinking that you want to convert this nation from its seemingly godless ways, but rest assured we Americans are more driven by our faith and our acceptance of God moreso than any other Western nation. There is no need to make the Secular Law of the Land to mirror the Law of Faith. If you do, if you persist, you're going to find more people bickering and arguing over the Law of Faith the same as they bicker and argue over the Secular Law. Bickering leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate... leads to suffering.

History has borne that out. Even Biblical history has shown that. Please note this. And please stop running for Secular office. You are clearly not meant for it.