By Jim Hoover

Seeing the weak Republican presidential field, Rick Perry (above) looks good to Republican kingpins.

Whether Rick Perry runs for president or not is immaterial. As another radicalized Republican, he is forced to follow the extremist path carved by Republican leadership, one supported by corporate money. That extremist path plans to exploit religion like many leaders before.

He is hosting a national prayer day on August 6^th called The Response. The promotional video for the event describes a plethora of plagues that have driven our nation to its knees: economic collapse, violence, perversion, division, abuse, natural disaster, terrorism, depression, addiction and fear.

Suddenly the voice of hope soars with heavenly music, a solemn Latina declares, “We will pour out our cry to Jesus.” The next scene? Surprise! The man who appear is The Response — Rick Perry.

The Response is being funded by the extremist American Family Association (AFA) and will feature a cadre of Religious Right leaders. Implied is that no non-Christian need come.

Such associations seem to meet the litmus test of radicalism that post-Teabag Republicans require.

For example, Perry has endorsed the radical secessionist King Street Patriots, an arm of the Republican Party and reportedly funded– you guessed it – by the Koch brothers. The group calls for Texas seceding from the United States. Indeed, Perry once said that if the Obama administration didn’t change its low-down ways, Texans might start thinking about succession. The group is also associated with intimidating minority voters in the 2010 Texas election, so much so that Congresswoman Sheila Jackson requested the Department of Justice to send poll monitors.

Getting back to the American Family Association, its leaders call it non-denominational and apolitical, but it is far from it — radically far. The AFA is powered by politically-active, Religious-Right individuals and groups, groups which demonize gays and lesbians, as well as non-Christians at any political forum.

Supporting groups like AFA is indeed a litmus test for Republican candidates, and that carries the baggage of the religious extremists associated with the group. Many of us remember George W. Bush’s exploitation of religion in justifying war, using terms like crusade against what he called “radical Islamists” and his messianic delusions about his role as president. Funding of religious programs with public money was another Bush policy, thus violating The First Amendment’s separation of church and state.

The AFA, representative of radical fundamentalist thinking, is best known for its various boycott campaigns, including art censorship, book banning in schools, and political advocacy against women’s rights like funding for family planning. It also controls the vast American Family Radio, an online news service, and sponsors a myriad of conservative-value conferences frequented by Republican leaders.

It follows that if the next president is Republican, he would cater to such groups, and we might well see much more entanglement of religion and the government.

AFA’s president is Tim Wildmon, who claims that Obama is forcing homosexuality into every place he can.

Bryan Fischer (above), the chief spokesperson for AFA, supports some of the most bigoted and shocking ideas found in the Religious Right, including:

• Gays were responsible for the Holocaust, Fischer calling them domestic terrorists.
• Demands that all immigrants “convert to Christianity” and renounce their religions.
• African American women “rut like rabbits” due to welfare.
• Native Americans are morally disqualified from living in America because they didn’t convert to Christianity, and God cursed them with alcoholism and poverty.

Other associates include Jim Garlow, a close spiritual adviser to Newt Gingrich, who likens homosexuality to bestiality, says legal abortion is responsible for unemployment and believes that the “lethal ideological radiation” of progressives “is killing our nation.”

John Hagee, who leads a megachurch in San Antonio, Texas, was invited by Perry to join The Response. Hagee is known for referring to the Catholic Church as “The Great Whore,” and saw Katrina as God’s means to stop a “homosexual rally.” In families, wives, he says, must be submissive to their husbands.

Rick Perry’s promotional video hopes to associate him with early critical times in our history, times when our forefathers used prayer for inspiration in writing our Constitution, and for guidance in going to war — the Civil War and WW II.

The radical partisan leadership of George W. Bush helped to bring our own critical times.

Rick Perry followed Bush as governor of Texas, and seems to offer the same kind of demagogic neo-conservative leadership and is promoting the same messianic image.

One would hope that we have learned a lesson, whether the Republican candidate is Perry or some other radical, who thinks he’s ordained to rule by God.