Mark Steyn: “Get lost“:
As to whether he’s a Christian, have you asked him whether he has attended even semi-regularly any church other than that of Jeremiah (“God damn America”) Wright? A man is free to attend the Westboro Baptist Church but if he chooses to do so I’m not obligated to defend his Christianity. And frankly, whatever the President’s personal faith, there is no dispute that his leadership of the western world has been an utter catastrophe for Christians around the planet. Some of the oldest Christian communities on earth have been entirely extinguished on Obama’s watch: in Mosul, Iraq, which was an American protectorate on the day he took office, not a single Christian remains. Every single one of them is dead or fled. So, instead of jumping through your preposterous hoops and speaking up for the most powerful man in the world, I would rather speak up for the powerless – for the Nigerian schoolgirls, for the Yazidi, for the Copts in Egypt, and for all the other beleaguered Christian communities in the world this feckless president has set alight and watched burn.
No, Trump has no obligation to defend Barack Obama from charges of being a Muslim, or anything else. McCain was a fool to do so, and to be unwilling to hit him on Jeremiah Wright.
If I’d been in Trump’s position, my response to that guy would have been, “No we don’t have a problem with Muslims. But we do have a problem with Islam. to the degree that Muslims take their religion too devoutly, it becomes a problem, and it’s un-American. In this country, we have separation of church and state, a concept that is anathema to Islam.”
I agree with Ben Carson, too. Who in the world would advocate that a devout Muslim become president? Certainly no one who cares about the founding principles of the country, or the First Amendment.
[Update a while later]
I agree with Powerline‘s take on Carson’s comments (not to imply that I’m a big Carson guy).
The irony is they are asking a presidential candidate if his belief is that a presidents beliefs are important.
With a pending announcement of a candidate to drop out of the presidential race, I think what many people got so very wrong is that in the minds of many voters, natural-conservative voters rather than official Movement Conservatives or Conservative-Libertarian Fusionists, is that this race is about the Deficit or about public employee pensions being too generous? Or public employee unions?
I think those issues are “barking up the wrong tree.” I gave you a topic — discuss amongst yourselves . . .
There are several photos of Obama at worship. You can see it every time he looks at himself in a mirror.