Feiler Faster

Feiler Faster

Obama a Biblical Plague?

posted by bfeiler | 10:11am Monday May 12, 2008

Interesting language in a Bob Novak column:

John McCain, who has spent the last two months trying to consolidate right-wing support as the Republican candidate for president, has a problem of disputed dimensions with a vital component of the conservative coalition: the evangelicals. The biggest question is whether Mike Huckabee is part of the problem or the solution for McCain.
An element of the Christian community is not reconciled to McCain’s candidacy but instead regards the prospective presidency of Barack Obama in the nature of a Biblical plague visited upon a sinful people. These militants look at former Baptist preacher Huckabee as “God’s candidate” running for president in 2012. Whether they can be written off as merely a troublesome fringe group depends on Huckabee’s course.

Plague? Biblical? Is this going to be the Exodus campaign all of a sudden? Obama has likened his candicacy to the “Joshua generation,” saying on several occasions that the leaders of the civil rights movemement with the Moses generation and his generation is the one that follows, designed to take African-Americans (and the rest of the country as well) into the Promised Land. Now suddenly we have language coming out of the evangelical wing of the GOP that he is a biblical plague. And not the good kind, like the ones God sends to free the Moses generation. The 2008 Presidential Election is shaping up to be, among other things, an exegetical battle over the Book of Exodus.



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jestrfyl

posted May 12, 2008 at 10:52 am


Further proof that the conservatives do not do their homework. I do not know how they might use it, but Obama’s first name means “handsome” of “beautiful” in Arabic, and it was the name of Mohammed’s horse that flew him to heaven at the conclusion of God’s revelation to him. Now, if they were not so traumatized by all things Moslem they might know this and find some mischeivous way to apply it. But they are driven more by fear than anything else, so they stop short of learning anything. Instead Obama continues to be the candidate of hope filled change rather than fear stained continuations. So blessings on him, and I hope he carries us as a nation as well as his namesake carried the Prophet.



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kdiamond

posted May 12, 2008 at 2:10 pm


You can only hope it remains “an exegetical battle” and not a more literal one. When I hear people declare they know who is or is not God’s candidate, I’m reminded of Yitzhak Rabin.
His assassin offered no regrets…after all, he was acting on God’s orders.



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