Sunday Open Thread [12.4.11]

small belgium: Antwerp from Jasper Léonard on Vimeo.

The new Des Moines Register Iowa Poll shows Newt Gingrich has “carved out a clear lead” in the GOP presidential race with 25%, followed by Ron Paul at 18% and Mitt Romney at 16%.

“The results show Gingrich’s ascendancy has the potential to grow, pollster J. Ann Selzer said. More respondents choose Gingrich as their second choice than any other candidate. Together, 43% of likely caucusgoers pick him as first or second.”

“I’ve been watching some of these Republican debates and they’re just terrible. Terrible. It’s embarrassing for me as a Republican to watch this stuff.” — Former Sen. John Danforth (R-MO), in an interview with KTRS.

More from John Danforth:

What have been the big applause lines in these debates? Well, a statement that the governor of Texas is responsible for killing 234 people on death row. Or that we favor torture. Or that we’re creating a fence on the Mexican border that electrocutes people when they try to cross it. Or when people show up at the emergency room at hospitals and they’re not insured don’t treat them. And that, I mean these are the big applause lines, people just hoop and holler when they hear all that. […]

It doesn’t have anything to do with the Republican party that I was a part of. This is just totally different. And all of these people who are saying this, y’know, and claiming that, y’know, they’re for all this stuff, they also sort of ostentatiously say, “Oh, we’re very religious people. We really, we’re just very pious, Christian people.” They were for torture, and electrocution of the people on along the border and all of that. That doesn’t have anything to do with, is contrary to the Christianity that I understand.

John Danforth is a Reverend. He knows Christianity. And he knows that the Republicans today cheering death and attacking the poor and immigrants are not Christian. Indeed, given what Jesus Christ actually did and taught, these Republicans today are Anti-Christian.