Recently, a 2016 presidential frontrunner had the gall to question the religious convictions of Barack Obama. Asked whether Obama was a Muslim, this candidate responded, “There’s nothing to base that on, as far as I know.”
That was Hillary Clinton circa 2008 on her then-primary opponent. That comment certainly did not create the firestorm that the comments of Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin did earlier this week.
Last weekend, Walker was asked by The Washington Post whether he believed President Barack Obama was a Christian. “I don’t know,” Walker answered. “I’ve actually never talked about it or I haven’t read about that. I’ve never asked him that.”
This has prompted a week of political browbeating from the left, which insists that Walker should have immediately conferred upon Obama the status of Christian in good standing. Members of the media who agreed with Walker – or who went further and actually openly expressed their doubts about Obama’s religiosity – were termed racist and xenophobic.
Meanwhile, members of the media routinely question Republicans over their religious beliefs, even though those Republicans actually reflect religious belief in their behavioral views on issues like abortion and same-sex marriage.
On Tuesday, publisher and writer of the Political Wire Taegan Goddard slammed Walker for praying. Walker had stated he was “still trying to decipher if this is God’s calling.” Which prompted Goddard to snark:
“Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) frequently says he’s waiting for ‘God’s calling’ to run for president, so he was recently asked under public records laws to provide call ‘a copy/transcript of all communications with God, the Lord, Jesus or any other form of deity.’ Walker’s office responded that no such records exist.”
Goddard wasn’t the only major media figure attacking Republican candidates’ religious preference. HBO’s Bill Maher blogged just two days ago that Jeb Bush is a “convenient Catholic,” explaining:
W. became an Evangelical Protestant and coincidentally ran for Governor of Texas, where voters are 34% Evangelical Protestant / 24% Catholic.
Jeb noticed his wife was Catholic after 22 years, and ran for Governor of Florida, where the voters are 26% Catholic / 25% Evangelical Protestant.
The voters in both states were only 15 percent mainline Protestant, the faith with which Bush children come originally installed. Now, of course, who am I to question God’s power to work wondrous change? I’m just saying the Bush boys tend to believe in whatever juju the locals do.
President Obama’s super PAC accepted $1 million from Maher in the last election cycle. Will Obama be expected to return that cash?
Over at The Daily Beast, far-left sleazebucket Max Blumenthal penned an article in 2009 supposedly ripping the lid off of “Bobby Jindal’s Secret Past,” stating:
[A]s the country gets acquainted with the Bayou’s boy wonder, the stranger details of Jindal’s religious or personal background remain largely unknown…How many Americans know that Jindal boasted of participating in an exorcism that purged the spirit of Satan from a college girlfriend?
Over at the Huffington Post, columnist Rajiv Malhotra wrote that Jindal’s conversion to Catholicism was pure political chicanery:
The example of Jindal demonstrates the pressure to capitulate for the sake of political ambition. Jindal couldn’t change his color, but he converted his religion to become less different from the dominant white Christians of his party.
On a broader level, President Obama routinely calls into question the religious faiths of those with whom he disagrees. It’s why he cites, wildly out of context, quotes from the New Testament about “the least of these” – the implication being that if you don’t endorse his political agenda, you aren’t a true Christian.
In short, the same media that thinks it should be totally out of bounds to question President Obama’s religion is fine when members of the media question the religious credentials and sincerity of Jeb Bush, Bobby Jindal, and Scott Walker – and none of the three have cited their religious convictions to lie about a major policy issue, as President Obama did with regard to same-sex marriage.
Ben Shapiro is Senior Editor-At-Large of Breitbart News and author of the new book, The People vs. Barack Obama: The Criminal Case Against The Obama Administration (Threshold Editions, June 10, 2014). He is also Editor-in-Chief of TruthRevolt.org. Follow Ben Shapiro on Twitter @benshapiro.
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