Poll Shows That Southern Evangelicals Are More Simon Legree Than Jesus

Is Obama Dead In The Southern States?

Or do they just want him tortured a bit?

WASHINGTON -- A new poll released Thursday (Sept. 11) finds that nearly six in 10 white Southern evangelicals believe torture is justified, but their views can shift when they consider the Christian principle of the golden rule. The poll, commissioned by Faith in Public Life and Mercer University, found that 57 percent of respondents said torture can be often or sometimes justified to gain important information from suspected terrorists. Thirty-eight percent said it was never or rarely justified. But when asked if they agree that "the U.S. government should not use methods against our enemies that we would not want used on American soldiers," the percentage who said torture was rarely or never justified rose to 52 percent.

So Obama has TWO things going against him in states like Tennessee and Alabama: he's black and he's against torture. Yesterday, we saw that racism is still in the picture when FRC took very slow action against a racist "political satire" display of "Obama Waffles" and now we learn that 60% of Southern Evangelicals (for the most part, read Southern Baptist Convention) approve of torture. Big surprise. Have we forgotten about the first 65 years of the last century? Did they not exist? Was Jim Crow a figment of someone's imagination? And deeper in history: wasn't the Southern Baptist Convention formed because of a pro-slavery stance? Will Obama lose the election because of his policies or because of his race? Or a combination of both? There is something strange about people who:

• Say they are Christian
• Are against Abortion
• Support the Death Penalty
• Support Torture
• Say they are Pro Life
• Act racist
• Apologize for Slavery (150 years after the fact)

Obama doesn't have a chance with them. I hope he doesn't waste too much valuable campaign time on them.