Gingrich & Huckabee in Church

Newt Gingrich and Mike Huckabee, along with Oliver North, spoke at a Virginia church forum on Friday.  I'm not sure when Newt Gingrich became one of the "leading voices of the Republican Party's evangelical wing," as the news report describes him. But he has been much more overtly religious after his recent conversion to Catholicism.  I used to like Gingrich, back when he led the GOP opposition and helped regain control of Congress. But it has been all downhill from there. Gingrich was vying with Huckabee at the forum  to see who could make the stupidest statement. Here's Gingrich:

"I think this is one of the most critical moments in American history," Gingrich said. "We are living in a period where we are surrounded by paganism."

Does Gingrich even know what paganism means? And if we are at a critical point in history, does it have anything to do with paganism? Ok, that's pretty stupid. But then there was Huckabee.  

The United States is a "blessed" nation, he said, calling American revolutionaries' defeat of the British empire "a miracle from God's hand."

The same kind of miracle, he said, led California voters to approve Proposition 8, which overturned a state law legalizing same-sex marriages.

Huckabee might want to read some histories of the Revolutionary War. If he did, he might understand that there are plenty of actual reasons why the U.S. succeeded in achieving independence. There were no miracles involved, and none were necessary. And the comment about Prop 8, regardless of which side you are on, is just idiotic. How is a successful well-funded, well-organized grassroots political campaign some sort of miracle? I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that Huckabee doesn't think Barack Obama's election was a miracle given by God -- even though when he announced his candidacy, his victory was far more of a longshot than Prop 8.

Both Gingrich & Huckabee argued that "the rights of Americans stem from God and to ignore that connection is perilous." What's perilous is pretending that our rights come from a being that lacks any evidence for existence, instead of recognizing that they derive from our Constitution and political structure. They also actually "urged Christians to get involved in politics to preserve the presence of religion in American life." That's right, we don't have enough religion in American life. What country are they living in?

I expect this sort of thing from Huckabee. But now Gingrich is also doing his best to associate the GOP with conservative Christianity. Thanks for nothing, Newt.