Richard Land

As we have said before, it is remarkable that media outlets continue to turn to Richard Land for political prognostications given his laughable track record. 

During the last election, Land could not stop talking about how Fred Thompson was a "Southern-fried Reagan" who possessed "a tantalizing combination of charisma, conviction and electability," while gushing that to "see Fred work a crowd must be what it was like to watch Rembrandt paint.” 

Voters, of course, did not see it that way.

Not too long ago, Land was publicly predicting that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton would resign her position so that she could launch a primary challenge against President Obama and that she would do so within thirty days. 

That was in October of 2010. 

But still, media outlets continue to turn to Land to provide "insights" into political races and so I guess they get what they deserve .... such as pieces like this in which he compares the Republican candidates to the cast of "Happy Days":

For those of a certain age, the remaining GOP field reminds them of some of the cast of the fabulously successful TV series “Happy Days.” Santorum is Richie Cunningham, the bright, earnest student body president who will grow up to be a solid citizen and probably president of the Rotary Club. Romney is Mr. Cunningham, Richie’s father, a stable provider and businessman. Gingrich is the Fonz, Arthur Fonzarelli, who steals the show and the series. It was originally intended to be Ron Howard’s (Richie Cunningham) star vehicle, but from the Fonz’s first appearance all eyes were on him. He was the hot ticket, and the series often revolved around him and his escapades.

While Gingrich is ahead in the polls, the majority of likely Republican voters — according to Rasmussen — still believe Romney is going to be the eventual nominee. Why? Well, I think it is clear that while the Fonz is the most charismatic character on “Happy Days,” Richie and Mr. Cunningham certainly appear to be more stable and successful husband material. And picking a president is in some ways similar to picking a spouse. You’re going to be living with that person and his or her decisions every day for at least four years. Gingrich’s unfavorability rating (56 percent) more than doubles his favorability rating (27 percent) with the general populace in a Fox News and Opinion Dynamics poll.

Gingrich’s challenge will be to get a majority of Americans to believe in his potential to settle down to the task and be the president they need him to be. After all, in “Happy Days,” Mrs. Cunningham always saw more potential in “Arthur” than the other characters. And as we all know, mothers often know best.

There are few things more irritating that seeing Richard Land hold himself up as a paragon of civility, the sort of which is desperately needed in today's political arena: 

The faith community needs to be a check against political vitriol in the 2012 election, which two religious leaders say has the potential to be the "ugliest campaign" in decades.

Jim Wallis, the progressive CEO of Sojourners, and Richard Land, the conservative head of The Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, are two religious scholars with opposing political views. But at their joint event at the National Press Club in Washington Wednesday, they agreed on some issues as they discussed and debated faith and the 2012 election.

According to Wallis, while he disagrees with Land on most political issues, they were able to have a civil debate - something Wallis hopes politicians can learn from.

...

Land agreed, saying that the faith community in America must lead by example.

"Instead of attacking the person, we deal with issues and we call people when they start straying from that," Land explained. "We are going to have to be very watchful. I think the temptation for this one to get down and dirty is going to be overwhelming."

...

Land said he worried that when President Barack Obama's re-election campaign looks at the polling numbers, they will realize that Obama "has got no choice if he wants to get re-elected but to take the focus off of issues and start saying, 'Well, my opponent's worse than I would be.'"

Really? 

This would be the same Richard Land who said that Oprah is "unimaginably dangerous," that the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell would bring "God's judgment on our nation," and that gays are recruiting children in order to bring about the "outright sexual paganization of society."

And who can ever forget the time when Land literally compared President Obama and Democrats in Congress to the Nazis:

President Barack Obama and Democratic leaders of Congress are advocating healthcare reform that will result in rationing of care, making them guilty of the same ideology that fueled the Nazi Holocaust, Richard Land told the Christian Coalition of Florida at a Sept. 26 banquet in Orlando.

“I want to put it to you bluntly. What they are attempting to do in healthcare, particularly in treating the elderly, is not something like what the Nazis did. It is precisely what the Nazis did,” said Land, president of the Southern Baptist Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission.

...

Land said he has bestowed on Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, the president’s chief healthcare advisor, the “Dr. Josef Mengele Award” for his advocacy of healthcare rationing. Mengele was the German SS officer and medical doctor dubbed the “Angel of Death” for his role in the Holocaust.

“We are faced with what I call ‘biological bigotry’ and it is every bit as pernicious, every bit as evil, every bit as destructive as the racial and ethnic bigotry that has plagued us in the past,” he said.

...

“The Nazis said people should be euthanized when they had lives unworthy of life. … Well, at the very least Dr. Emanuel, [House Speaker] Nancy Pelosi, [Sen.] Max Baucus and President Obama are saying that some people have lives less worthy of life. And the older you are, the sicker you are, the less valuable your life is and the more likely they want to terminate your care,” Land said.

So yes, let's all be lectured by a man who says the Democrats are Nazis and that gays are recruiting on the finer points of remaining civil. 
 

It is amazing to watch Richard Land, head of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission try to downplay fellow Southern Baptist Robert Jeffress' assertions that Mormonism is "a cult" while admitting that, according to SBC doctrine, Mormonism is, in fact, a cult [PDF.]

Land dedicated a good portion of his radio program last week to discussing the issue, trying to draw a distinction between being a cult in a "social" sense and being a cult in a "theological" sense before finally admitting that while Mormonism may not a "cult" in the former sense, it most is in the latter:

Technically speaking, theologically, a cult is a movement, a religious movement, that claims to still be within the confines of Christianity when it has moved beyond the parameters of orthodox Christian faith. And that certainly fits Mormonism. Mormonism is not just a distinctive denomination within Christianity. Mormonism, using the language of Christianity and claiming to believe in the Jesus of the New Testament and the God of the Bible, promulgate doctrines which are completely at odds with orthodox, with a small "o," Apostles' Creed, standard Christianity. That makes them a cult.

This is, of course, exactly the same distinction that Jeffress has been making, so it is a little hard to understand why Land thinks that he is somehow clarifying things by saying the very same thing that set off the controversy in the first place.

Over the weekend, the Liberty Counsel's Rena Lindevaldsen was a guest on "Richard Land Live!" where she and Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, discussed her new book chronicling the case involving her client, ex-gay kidnapper Lisa Miller.

During the program, Land warned that gay rights activists seek to "reduce [Christians] to the level of the Ku Klux Klan" so that they will be ostracized by society and went on to assert that gays are "recruiting" children, which is a form a child abuse, while claiming that homosexuality is "incomprehensible."  In the end, Land claimed, gays really just want to destroy the institution of marriage in order to bring about the "full-blown paganization" of America:

They're recruiting down in the grade school levels. They're recruiting people for homosexual clubs and it's really child abuse is what it is.

You need to find out what's going on in your school. You need to ask your children what's going on, you need to see what books their reading, you need to know what the teacher is talking about because, I'm telling you, they are trying to brainwash our children in the public schools.

It's the one sin that I know about that I find totally incomprehensible. But obviously some boys do find it comprehensible, because otherwise there wouldn’t be any homosexuality.

Even if you take out AIDS, male homosexuals die much earlier than heterosexual males do because of the inherently dangerous - health dangerous stuff that they engage in. But I don't think that's the big issue - I think that's a side issue. I think the real issue is they want to destroy marriage.

The alternative is not live and let live - it is the marginalization and the ostracizing of people of traditional faith. And it will be the full-blown paganization. You know, they have already started talking about polyamory and pedophilia. They're going to start talking now about lowering the age of consent - they are already starting to talk about it, saying who are we to deprive a child of his or her sexuality? And we’re going to end up like Greece and Rome. If this dam breaks, the tidal wave will be just an outright sexual paganization of society.