Suckers

Never exactly geniuses, those evangelical Christians who imagined the virtuous and value-drunk president was one of their own are now very intellectually hungover. As they blink into the profane daylight and nurse their horribly throbbing theories, they put me in mind of those right wing Jews who praised Bush's Israel policy, only to see Abu Mazen as a White House guest, and the White House co-sighning a French proposed cease-fire that left Israel emasculated and embaressed.

Why are fundementalist Zionists and fundementalist Christians such chumps? Like dogs returning to their vomit, they go back to Bush, again and again, voting against their own economic and class interests, only to discover, again and again, that the president is playing them. Like the poet Ezzie's guest poster recently cited, they keep falling into the same hole.

As Pastor Chuck Baldwin put it: No president in American history played the "God card" any better than George W. Bush. Early in his 2000 presidential campaign, Bush convinced fundamentalist Christian leaders that he was "their" man. Those Christian leaders went on to promote and support Mr. Bush to the tune of two successful presidential election victories.

Now, [Pastor Baldwin continues] it appears, this (like Bush's politically expedient fondness for Israel) was all a sham: GOP strategists played evangelical believers for suckers. It's all in Tempting Faith: An Inside Story of Political Seduction, a new book written by David Kuo, a disillusioned Bushie who previously served as Special Assistant to President George W. Bush and Deputy Director of the Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives.

Kuo saw it all from the inside, and his message is this: Christians were swindled.

[Updated Decembver 24, 2005]