BrinkLindsey.com – The Age of Abundance

I read in Robert Novak’s column this morning that Mike Huckabee held a fundraiser earlier this week at the Houston home of Dr. Steven Hotze. As Novak notes, Hotze is “a leader in the highly conservative Christian Reconstruction movement.”

Christian Reconstructionists, for those unfamiliar with the term, are Religious Right radicals who believe that America, and the rest of the world besides, should be governed in accordance with strict Biblical law. And yes, that includes stoning adulterers. Here’s a snippet from “A Manifesto for the Christian Church,” a 1986 document from an outfit called the Coalition on Revival that was signed by, among others, Steven Hotze:

We affirm that the Bible is not only God’s statements to us regarding religion, salvation, eternity, and righteousness, but also the final measurement and depository of certain fundamental facts of reality and basic principles that God wants all mankind to know in the sphere of law, government, economics, business, education, arts and communication, medicine, psychology, and science. All theories and practices of these spheres of life are only true, right, and realistic to the degree that they agree with the Bible.

For more, check out this audio clip of Hotze from back in 1990. Over the years, Hotze has achieved some prominence for his anti-abortion and anti-gay activism. Also, the good doctor appears to be a total quack.

Meanwhile, Novak reports that among the members of the fundraiser’s host committee was Baptist minister Rick Scarborough. The founder of Vision America and a self-described “Christocrat,” Scarborough made news earlier this year when he argued that the HPV vaccine improperly interferes with God’s punishment of sexual license.

Just when you thought the Huckabee campaign couldn’t get any creepier….

UPDATE: Commenters wonder if I’m just kidding about Reconstructionists’ support for stoning adulterers. I’m not.

Paul Krugman’s transformation into a Howard Beale wannabe continues to (take your pick) astound/amuse/sadden. In today’s column, Krugman blasts Barack Obama for his “naïve” refusal to demonize those with whom he disagrees on public policy issues. Siding instead with John Edwards, he endorses the view that “America needs another F.D.R. — a polarizing figure, the object of much hatred from the right, who nonetheless succeeded in making big changes.”

Hmm, who’s the one being naïve here? Let’s recall that F.D.R. won the presidency in the depths of the worst economic cataclysm in American history — public blame for which fell squarely on his partisan and ideological opponents. Consequently, F.D.R. entered the White House with 313 fellow Democrats in the House and 61 in the Senate. Under the circumstances, it is entirely understandable that he didn’t worry too much about maintaining bipartisan good feeling.

But does anybody think that the political environment in 2009 will be remotely similar to that of 1933? Even assuming that a Democrat wins the White House and Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress are maintained, how likely is it that “big changes” are going to occur without some significant level of Republican support?

Based, no doubt, on the direct line to vox populi afforded him by his twin perches at the New York Times and Princeton University, Krugman is convinced that the hour of the angry populist is at hand. “[T]here’s every reason to believe,” he writes, ”that the Democrats can win big next year if they run with that populist tide.” Krugman cites as confirming evidence CNN and FoxNews focus groups that declared Edwards the winner of the most recent Democratic debate. He’s curiously silent, however, about all the other polls that show Edwards trailing badly behind the more centrist Hillary Clinton and Obama.

At the end of his column, Krugman accuses those who long for a less vitriolic politics of “projecting their own desires onto the public.”

That’s funny.