<\/span> Just when you think that the presidential primaries can\u2019t get any dirtier, the politicians come up with something new. The latest is religious bigotry by proxy, or bootleg bigotry, as I like to call it. With Texas governor Rick Perry polling lower than Michelle Bachmann and Ron Paul, his advisors wanted to posture him as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2251,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2552","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n
Just when you think that the presidential primaries can\u2019t get any dirtier, the politicians come up with something new. The latest is religious bigotry by proxy, or bootleg bigotry, as I like to call it. With Texas governor Rick Perry polling lower than Michelle Bachmann and Ron Paul, his advisors wanted to posture him as the anti-Romney\u2014that is, as the Republican candidate who, if somewhat unpolished and an uneven speaker, is still the candidate most unlike the voluble but hated Mitt Romney. And they knew very well that Romney is vulnerable because of his religion. How could they exploit this weakness without making Perry look like a bigot?<\/span>
Enter religious-bigotry-by-proxy. It was not by co-incidence that Rev. Robert Jeffress, Pastor of First Baptist Church in Dallas, was asked to introduce Rick Perry to a group of social conservatives in Washington in October. Rev. Jeffress took the occasion to declare that Rick Perry was a Christian and Mitt Romney was not, for which he was taken to task on \u201cHardball with Chris Matthews.\u201d Rev. Jeffress\u2019 response to Matthews was calculated, well-rehearsed and rather clever. People should be able to vote for a Mormon if he\u2019s the best politician available, Rev. Jeffress\u2019 said, but all other things being equal, you\u2019re better off voting for a Christian. Besides, he said, Mormonism<\/a> is a cult.
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