E.J. Dionne on Tuesday night's monstrosity:
Perhaps I am influenced by the Christmas season, but there was something genuinely appalling that candidates who so often claim to be devout Christians allocated the bulk of their time to warfare, to throwing people out of our country and to walling them off. There was almost nothing about our obligations to millions around the world who are suffering, from the very wars the candidates were so focused on and from a depth of poverty that is hard for us in rich countries to fathom.
I think that's always present, bubbling underneath my more overt contempt of modern Republican politics: its casual dismissal — were I a Christian, I would say blasphemous dismissal — of Christianity's fundamental teachings, all the while exploiting the religion in name only. Even as an agnostic, there's something abhorrent to me about politicians cynically "using" God, whether or not he or she or it exists, for personal gain.
Such contempt isn't limited to what the Gang of Nine had to say — virtually all positive — about warfare Tuesday night. If @therealJesus were a 21st-century rabbi, he might not love Democratic politicians as much as his own Scripture admonished, but my confidence is high that he would be utterly aghast at Republican pols, as well as at their electoral enclaves of chronic prejudice and Christian piety. The latters' obsession with material gains and concomitant dread that somewhere, impoverished souls are benefitting from some government program? These are the right-wing, evangelical "Christian values" that make one retch.
It's not always conscious, but whenever I hear a Ted Cruz or Ben Carson or Chris Christie spouting off about the virtues of arbitrarily small government, what's really gagging me is the underlying thought of what a "good Christian" he is.