Candace

Talmadge

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Republican Ticket in 2012: Star-Powered Dominionism?

Leaving her post as Alaska’s governor has been a bumpy ride for Sarah Palin. She certainly did not help her cause with her outrageous and false “death panels” swipe at health care reform legislation that she soon tried to retract.

No lasting damage, however. Like Richard Nixon, Palin will simply reinvent herself on the grand tour for her memoire due next year.

Meanwhile, what about 2012? How will she meld her ambitions for high office to the GOP’s desperate need to reverse the electoral losing streak that began in 2006?

Maybe a little star power can help. In a Ronald Reagan redux, actor Jon Voight took the stage during an annual Republican fundraiser a while back. He fulminated against the president, citing a desire to “bring an end to this false prophet, Obama.”

Voight presumably meant nothing more than Obama being voted out of office in the next election. His political performance, however, brings up the question of a potential Republican presidential ticket. Voight tops the 2012 slate and taps Palin for a vice presidential rerun.

Could it happen? You betcha! Maybe star power will work its magic again for the GOP. Republicans make a fetish of bashing Hollywood yet ironically found their biggest success in one of its denizens: Reagan, a decidedly lesser light of the big screen.

Whoever gets the Republican 2012 nod, however, must also have one other credential. And that is the blessing of far-right religious zealots who want to remake this country into a Christian theocracy. Christian Dominionists are hostile to any other religion except their extreme version of Christianity, all non-whites, women’s rights, homosexuals and the U.S. Constitution, just for starters.

Let’s put it this way. Those who found Massachusetts appealing during the era of the Salem witch trials will adore a Dominionist theocracy.

Dominionists have hijacked the GOP. Otherwise John McCain would never have chosen as his running mate someone untried and obscure like Palin, with documented Dominionist connections. He needed her to win the far-right’s support in the general election, just as any Republican will need them again in 2012.

“If you do not have Dominionist ties, you will not be supported by the GOP as it exists today,” says author Leah Burton, who has written about Palin. According to Burton, other potential Republican presidential nominees, like Mike Huckabee, Newt Gingrich and even Mormon Mitt Romney, have Dominionist ties too.

Burton’s observation is supported by Bruce Wilson, founder of the web site TalktoAction, which researches and tracks right-wing religious extremists. Wilson has located video of Gingrich and Huckabee being endorsed by George Engle, who founded a Christian martyrdom movement known as TheCall. This far-right Christian organization played a significant role in supporting the anti-gay marriage Proposition 8 in California.

At a Nov. 1, 2008 rally to support the gay-marriage ban, Engle called for acts of Christian martyrdom from the stage. According to Wilson, Engle recently declared that for three decades of legalized abortion, the United States has incurred a blood debt that must be repaid in blood.

Does such language sound too strange to take seriously? Today’s American wannabe theocrats do seem bizarre, especially to religious moderates and those whose world view is primarily secular. They speak about practicing spiritual warfare, casting out demons and hunting down witches.

“They rely on information about them being so fantastic that most people won’t believe it,” Burton says.

Don’t be fooled. Their political goals are serious. They intend to subvert the U.S. government and replace it with a Christian theocracy. What’s really scary is how extensively they have infiltrated all branches of the U.S. military.

Unless things shift radically between now and the fall of 2012, the victor in the GOP presidential primaries will either be a Dominionist, have hidden Dominionist ties, or kowtow to the rabid religious right by choosing one among the Dominionist ranks as a running mate.

What would Jesus do?

© 2009 North Star Writers Group. May not be republished without permission.

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