Will Mike Huckabee ever speak to Sarah Palin again? Colleagues at FOX certainly stick together (like Hannity and Coulter, who lives under Hannity's desk for sure), but after Sarah's faux pas at the NRA on Sunday, Rev. Huckabee will likely be distancing himself from her.
American Conservative
Palin and all those who cheered her sacrilegious jibe ought to be ashamed of themselves. For us Christians, baptism is the entry into new life. Palin invoked it to celebrate torture. Even if you don’t believe that waterboarding is torture, surely you agree that it should not be compared to baptism, and that such a comparison should be laughed at.
Andrew Sullivan
And then she manages to go one step further. She invokes torture in the context of a Christian sacrament. Not since the Nazis’ Deutsche Christen have we seen something so disgusting and blasphemous in the morphing of Christianity into its polar opposite. Mercifully, some Christians on the right have managed to say something.
Joe Carter, The Gospel Coalition:Like backtracking on Cliven Bundy, Palin Tea Party/NRA supporters are struggling to put a brave face on a bad situation, but Palin, in her usual way, will no doubt shrug off the critics with an "aw shucks, this is what I meant, don't be so damned serious." Remember her defense of the gun site/get Gabriels Giffords campaign? She sloughed it off as a "surveyor's mark." Such implausible explanations have followed her "rogue" career without her batting an eye. But how can she get out of this one? Can she get a witch hunter like Rev. Muthee to pray over her? Can she rely on Franklin Graham or John Hagee for support? Pamela Geller, maybe, but not Pat Robertson.
For anyone to confess Christ as their savior and to compare one of the means of God's grace to an act of torture is reprehensible.
Oh, she could write a book about it all, but her last literary effort, Good Tidings, Great Joy, Protecting The Heart Of Christmas, failed to stir even the mildest of Scrooges or the most clueless right wing Christian.
Palin's Deadly Sins
Perhaps the most egregious error in the NRA speech was made later:
"When a kid in school is cussing away like any character in any Tarantino movie, nobody bats an eye," Palin said. "Ooh, but a kid saying a prayer in school, those hypocrites lose their minds."Palin was capitalizing on a non-event: the publisher of FOX News' Todd Starnes' book on "Traditional Values" suspiciously broadcast that his little girl was not allowed to pray in school. The school vehemently denied the charge.
Besides lying, Palin's violent rhetoric was so off the mark, that she seemed to be barely Christian in her attitude: Jake Tapper (below), notes that it may have been suitable for the NRA, but not suitable for the rest of America. The discussion, in fact, focused on Palin's viability in the political arena: it has shifted to "does anyone take Palin seriously anymore?" Palin's future career was pinned down to innocuous poseur. Poor Sarah.
Perhaps buffoonery in the light of a serious subject like gun control is also a sin: "And [the] Obama administration wants you ID'd for that? Well, then go ahead and carry a sign, too. A sign that says 'Yeah, I carry a gun because a cop is too heavy.'"
Celebrating Torture
Poor Sarah. Cutting off your nose hurts, doesn't it?
"What can one say but that this is a bona fide fascistic sentiment. It revels in violence against individuals tied down by their hands and feet and strapped to a terrifying board in order to be suffocated hundreds of times to near-death. It is the kind of statement you might expect from the Khmer Rouge ... [but] Palin – who wants to celebrate brutal torture as the American way." (Andrew Sullivan)Equating a torture to a universal Christian sacrament, glorifying it, amidst a speech calculated to stir up people dedicated to a life with firearms is foolish in the the extreme unless you're running for president of the NRA.
Poor Sarah. Cutting off your nose hurts, doesn't it?
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