Senator, disturbingly viable presidential candidate, and all-around turd in the Senate punch bowl Ted Cruz says you can’t be POTUS if you’re not religious:
Presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said Friday that he believes anyone who wants to be president must fear God and pray daily.
Speaking at the National Religious Liberties Conference in Iowa, Cruz joined other GOP presidential candidates for a discussion about the persecution of Christians in the U.S. and around the world. After some very extreme, very weird comments about homosexuality, right-wing pastor Kevin Swanson introduced Cruz to the stage to ask him how important it was for candidates to submit to Jesus Christ as “the king of the President of the United States.”
“Any president who doesn’t begin every day on his knees isn’t fit to be commander-in-chief of this country,” responded Cruz.
I like how he slipped in “his knees” there, and I don’t for a millisecond think it wasn’t deliberate. Now admittedly, he doesn’t actually say what the President should be doing on his knees every morning, but I think the implication is pretty clear.
You know, whatever. Cruz doesn’t think atheists are fit to be president, Ben Carson doesn’t think Muslims are; everybody’s got their own dumb little bigoted beliefs. What’s more interesting about Cruz’s remarks is the guy to whom he addressed them, this Kevin Swanson character, and his “very weird comments about homosexuality.” See, during the conference, Swanson went on at some length about how if his son were gay he would smear a bunch of cow shit on himself for some reason and then warned everybody not to carve happy faces on open sores or something. Really:
Later, Swanson said that he’d like to see the death penalty for homosexuals, but only after everybody has a fair amount of time to repent. Which I guess is charitable (?) of him:
If this guy were telling you his lunch order from McDonald’s in that voice, you’d rightly think about calling the guys in the white coats to haul him off to a mental hospital. Instead, he’s advocating the death penalty for homosexuals, which is a trillion times crazier than eating a Big Mac and fries. If you’re wondering, this isn’t the first time Swanson has said dangerously hateful and borderline insane things about homosexuality, and that includes previous suggestions that gays should be put to death. And yet, no fewer than three Republican presidential candidates shared a stage with Swanson even after he said this stuff. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that Mike Huckabee and Bobby Jindal also participated in this maniac’s religious liberty conference.
Ted Cruz went on CNN’s “The Lead with Jake Tapper” last Thusday, and to his credit Tapper asked him about his plan to speak at Swanson’s event:. Cruz’s response is kind of mind-boggling:
TAPPER: Quickly, if you could, you are speaking at a conference this weekend, the National Religious Liberties Conference in Des Moines. It’s organized by a guy named Kevin Swanson. You have been very outspoken about what you deem liberal intolerance of Christians.
But Kevin Swanson has said some very inflammatory things about gays and lesbians. He believes Christians should hold up signs at gay weddings holding up the Leviticus verse, instructing the faithful the put gays to death because what they do is an abomination.
I don’t hold you responsible for what other people say, but, given your concern about liberal intolerance, are you not in some ways endorsing conservative intolerance?
CRUZ: Listen, I don’t know what this gentleman has said and what he hasn’t said.
I know that, when it comes to religious liberty, this is a passion of mine that has been a passion of mine for decades, and that I have been fighting for religious liberty for everyone, fighting for religious liberty for Christians, for Jews, for Muslims, for every one of us to practice our faith.
To his discredit, Tapper stuck this question at the very end of the interview, and then let Cruz filibuster, so he couldn’t ask any follow up questions, like:
- You really don’t know what Swanson has said?
- Do any of your people know what he’s said?
- Had you at least heard of Kevin Swanson before you agreed to speak at his conference?
- Are you in the habit of accepting speaking invitations from total strangers?
- If the KKK invited you to speak at a religious liberty conference, would you do it? How about ISIS?
The real kicker is that, even if all three of these guys had never heard of Kevin Swanson before they accepted his invitation, they were present and able to hear his words first-hand, and…what? Did any of them walk out? Dispute Swanson’s disgusting worldview when they got a chance to speak? Do anything that might have indicated with Swanson even a little bit? No. How can you not conclude that all three of them must agree with this guy?
Maybe I’m being naive, but the belief that the state should put gay people to death has to be a pretty minority view even in the anti-gay wing of the GOP base.
It is, right?
Please, I’m cynical enough as it is, don’t tell me there’s some substantial number of Republican voters out there advocating the imposition (re-imposition, I guess) of capital punishment for homosexuality.
I remember weeks in 2008 devoted to coverage of Jeremiah Wright, and while Wright said some horrible things (but also some accurate things, as well), I don’t remember him calling for the execution of his fellow human beings. As far as I can tell, the fact that Cruz, Huckabee, and Jindal (though mostly Cruz, who’s the only one of the three with an actual shot at the nomination) appeared on stage with a raving psychopath who advocated killing gay people got about as much media attention as JEB’s declaration that he would go back in time and kill Baby Hitler, if it were possible to do such a thing. And my sincere question is: why? Why shouldn’t all three of these guys see nothing for the rest of this campaign (or until they really give an answer) but questions about whether or not they agree with Kevin Swanson that gays should be put to death? Isn’t this kind of a big deal, to have serious (again, at least in Cruz’s case) presidential candidates endorsing a message like this?
Hey, thanks for reading! If you come here often, and you like what I do, would you please consider contributing something (sorry, that page is a work in progress) to keeping this place running and me out of debtor’s prison? Also, while you’re out there on the internet tubes, please consider liking this blog’s Facebook page and following me on Twitter! Thank you!
The Foreign Exchanges Companion 