Conservative activists compared Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) to Jesus Christ during an event Friday, earning a chorus of amens from the audience of Iowa Republicans. Steve Scheffler, a conservative Christian activist, thanked God for the freshman Texas senator who helped engineer the 16-day government shutdown in his effort to derail the Affordable Care Act. He also prayed for more conservative leaders like Cruz who were willing to “be crucified for their belief system,” reported BuzzFeed…. “Every time one of these guys attacks him, it’s good for him,” said one Iowa Republican operative. “He’s like a superhero. The more bullets that get shot at him, the bigger and stronger he gets.”…. Cruz and other conservatives at the annual Reagan fundraising dinner cast themselves as victims and compared themselves to David fighting an army of Goliaths that included the mainstream media and the Obama administration.
Imagine the hue and cry, the furious weeping and gnashing of teeth, that would erupt if someone on the Left compared…say, Harry Reid…to Jesus Christ. The absurdity of the comparison aside, the Christian Right would be aflame with righteous indignation over the idea that Liberals would DARE mention Reid in the same breath as the Prince of Peace (whom they view as their very own). Then look at what happened in Iowa over the weekend, where Ted Cruz was frequently (and absurdly) mentioned in the same breath as their Lord and Savior. No problem, right? Only when the Left does it…because as any REAL American knows, God’s a Conservative free-market Republican.
When godless Liberals do it, it’s the worst sort of anti-Christian blasphemy imaginable. When Conservative Christians do it, they’re simply expressing their admiration for someone willing to “be crucified for their belief system.” The predictable and trite David and Goliath analogies aside, how can it be viewed as hypocrisy when you’re convinced that God’s a Conservative Republican and therefore on your side? When you can’t be bothered with details like the separation of Church and State, it’s easy to believe that the Almighty is rightly and unquestionably on your side.
Except that there’s nothing about Ted Cruz that makes him a “superhero,” nor is he willing to “be crucified for their belief system.” Ted Cruz is all and only about his only political prospects and self-aggrandizement. He’s a demagogue, a hypocrite, and a liar of the first order. If it takes slandering the President to boost his political star, then so be it. One of the beautiful things about being a member of the Rabid Christian Right is that facts are virtually meaningless. What matters is what you can convince like-minded sheeple to be true. When you’re predisposed to assume the worst of The Black Guy in the White House ©, anything that paints him in an unflattering light is easily and quickly accepted as Gospel.
That most of these folks wouldn’t recognize the teachings of Jesus Christ if the Lord himself showed up with an instruction manual almost goes without saying. The truth is that the politics of the Rabid Christian Right has nothing to do with the true meaning of Christianity. What it’s really about is power and control, and if authoritarian zealots can use their conveniently bastardized faith to seize and maintain it, so much the better. The truth is that the Rabid Christian Right is a fraud whose true values have nothing in common with the true meaning of Christianity. Their apocalyptic world view is as grounded in biblical reality as Timothy McVeigh’s was in nonviolence.
I’d like to be able to believe that these “true” Christians believe in their heart of hearts that Ted Cruz is truly a man of God and destined to lead America back to the path of righteousness. They might have convinced themselves of that, but the truth is that they lust for power and they fear and hate those who think, believe, live, and/or love differently. Slowly but surely, their intent is to drag America back to the Dark Ages. Cruz is simply a politician gifted and unscrupulous enough to exploit their anger and fear.
And they wonder why I’m repulsed by modern Christianity….
