The crowd at the NRA convention went wild when their official gun moll Sarah Palin spoke – or more accurately gave a reading of her ‘favorite hits’ in her shrill Tea Party cheer leading voice. The content is never as important as the unifying spirit and code of guns, guns everywhere and for everyone – Yay Team! Oddly in such trigger happy surroundings Osama Bin Laden’s rather aggressive treatment by President Obama is never mentioned. Rather, Palin visits the obligatory Benghazi territory, then compares Obama’s ‘timid’ treatment of terrorists to what should be done, and what would be done if she – were president! Hear the roar of the crowd!
Feeling confident – as always, in front of ‘her people’ Palin could say nothing wrong – right? Well, not exactly. That’s why the story of the day is ‘How Sarah lost the Christians, a fun story of hubris and misunderstanding..
“They obviously have information on plots to carry out jihad, oh, but you can’t offend them, can’t make them feel uncomfortable, not even a smidgen.” She crowed, then continued,” Well, if I were in charge, they would know that water boarding is how we baptize terrorists!”
Wow…That last sentence will be the shot heard round the world. This time, Christians were actually listening to what Palin said, and are – at long last, offended by her oh-so-funny (in some circles) visual of water boarding as baptism!
Ron Dreher of the American Conservative weighed in. “OK, stop. Not only is this woman, putatively a Christian, praising torture, but she is comparing it to a holy sacrament of the Christian faith. It’s disgusting — but even more disgusting, those NRA members, many of whom are no doubt Christians, cheered wildly for her.”
By Tuesday, Faithful America had already reached its goal of 15,000 signatures on a petition condemning Palin for the remarks. “This is what we’ve come to in America: A former candidate for vice-president can equate torture and Holy Baptism, and one of the nation’s most powerful political lobbies erupts into cheers and applause,” Faithful America noted. “As usual, Palin’s remarks are already making international headlines, once again portraying Christianity as a religion of hatred and violence.”
In case they haven’t noticed, Sarah and her pals have been portraying us in a dim light for years. It’s a pity that it takes a church sacrament to get their attention.
Elsewhere, in the Washington Post: “Gov. Palin was attempting to appeal to the basest political populism (nothing in her remarks could be construed as genuinely conservative) by claiming that current U.S. counter terrorism policy is overly-tolerant and empathetic toward our enemies,” Joe Carter of The Gospel Coalition wrote. “Unfortunately, what Palin is proposing is a mixture of pagan ethics and civil deistic religion.”
It’s been a long time coming. While I applaud Conservative Christians for speaking out now, it is impossible to believe that this is the very first hint of her continual ‘appeal to the basest political populism’ that they have seen. Perhaps it is, as many have blindly followed her based entirely upon her conservative ‘Christian’ claims and (presumably) bumper stickers which share space with her NRA Mom slogans.