This Week In God (Maddow Blog)

[AlbertCat]

the YIKES! edition


First up from the God Machine this week is a look at the “presidential family forum,” held last night in Iowa, and hosted by a far-right religious-right group called The Family Leader, led by a conservative kingmaker named Bob Vander Plaats.

Right Wing Watch explained this week a little about the man who ran the show: “”Not only does Vander Plaats want to remove from office or defund the courts of judges who find in favor of marriage equality, he believes that anything, like gay marriage, that ‘goes against the law of nature’ is by definition unconstitutional . He argues that the government is an institution of God and therefore its purpose is ‘to promote righteousness’ and to apply ‘God’s principles and precepts.’”

And it’s against this backdrop that seven contenders for the Republican presidential nomination – Ben Carson, Ted Cruz, Carly Fiorina, Mike Huckabee, Rand Paul, Marco Rubio, and Rick Santorum – appeared at last night’s gathering, hoping to earn an endorsement. (In 2008, Vander Plaats backed Huckabee, who won that year’s Iowa caucuses, and in 2012 he backed Santorum, who won that year’s Iowa caucuses).

So, how’d it go? I think this helped capture the flavor of the evening.

Asked to name the first person they would call upon hearing about a terrorist attack, Carson and Rubio both said the Department of Homeland Security; Fiorina and Mike Huckabee both said they’d fall to their knees and pray.



All of it:

http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/week-god-112115?cid=sm_fb_maddow