So you might remember there was a bit of outrage when Rudy Giuliani questioned President Barack Obama’s patriotism last week. You might have seen it mentioned once or twice. Or a hundred times.
And there was a national gasp when Governor Scott Walker refused to answer whether President Obama was a Christian. When asked if Obama was a Christian, he merely said, “I don’t know. I’ve actually never talked about it or I haven’t read about that. I’ve never asked him that. You’ve asked me to make statements about people that I haven’t had a conversation with about that. How [could] I say if I know either of you are a Christian?”
That’s scandalous? He merely refused to play the media’s gotcha game.
It’s that kind of saturation coverage which has me interested to see if there’s the same level of horror now that Bill Maher has questioned presidential hopeful Jeb Bush’s conversion to Catholicism.
“Did you know Jeb Bush is Catholic? Neither did I,” wrote Maher. “[He] converted to Catholicism in 1996 — 22 years after marrying his Mexican-born wife, Columba, [sic] — and conveniently between the first time he ran for governor (and lost) and the second time he ran, and won. The Bushes play election hardball, but they also play the margins. They look for every little edge. So is there something to this?”
Maher points out the George W. Bush converted to Evangelical Protestantism before running for Governor of Texas, where 34 percent of voters also happen to be Evangelical Protestants.
That may be a helpful strategy for state elections, but Bush’s Catholicism probably won’t help much if he embarks on a national campaign. According to Pew Research, only 23.9 percent of Christians identify as Catholic nationally, while over 50 percent identify as some sort of protestant.
“Now, of course, who am I to question God’s power to work wondrous change?” he continued. “I’m just saying the Bush boys tend to believe in whatever juju the locals do.”
Maher’s a tool. I don’t care what he says. But I do think it’s interesting to hear the silence surrounding what idiocies dribble out of his malicious maw.
And since when has there been some kind of advantage to being a Catholic running for president? Uhm, there’s been Kennedy and…well, that’s it. So where is this great advantage for Bush in converting? That’s the thing. As is clear with most things Maher says, it doesn’t make sense.
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