Nearly 1/10 wouldn’t vote for a black person either, so that probably eats into that figure considerably.

My analysis is that socially, the US electorate is more Democrat than Republican (which is something most pollsters agree on), but that Republicans are more likely to vote. The reason Obama won in 2012 was his ability to get people out to vote.

The demographics of the US electorate are changing significantly, and the Republican party is appealing to a smaller slice of it, despite the fact that they have a more representative range of candidates in their primary. Unless and until the Republicans can appeal to a broader range of the population, they will continue to lose. George W Bush managed to appeal to more Hispanic voters than Republicans normally do – that’s what got him elected.

I analysed the 2014 election, in which the Republicans did well. It seemed to me that the reason for that was who voted.

Presidential elections have a higher turnout, and if the Democrats can maintain Obama’s high Democratic turnout, they will win in 2016.

I’ve been trying to decide whether it’s not knowing/caring or whether it’s just that they don’t really take them seriously. They pretend to, to co-religionists, but I wonder if in their heads they don’t really. A Catholic will tell you that they believe in transubstantiation, but I bet none of them taste blood and flesh when they take communion. If anyone did, a mental illness would be assumed immediately. Look how upset everyone got in 2012 when Catholicism was called Santorum’s Jesus-eating cult, but that’s exactly what it is.

And yes, it’s the idea of being fellow Christians that’s the most important thing, or even fellow One True God believers – there’s a lot of reaching out to Jews and Muslims too.

I suspect that most Seventh Day Adventists, like most religionists everywhere, don’t know or care much about the more bizarre aspects of their church doctrines. Like the Mormons and the Jehovah’s Witnesses, the 7th days originated in a time of virulent anti-Catholicism in America. Almost all Protestant sects developed in opposition to Catholicism. As Trump says, Presbyterianism is considered middle of the road today, but the concept of predestination is a radical refutation of free will as maintained by the RC church. There are still plenty of Presbyterians and related Calvinists today (although the numbers are declining). But how many of them subscribe to predestination, or even know anything about this central doctrine of their sect? As the foundations of Christians beliefs crumble, the various churches are ignoring their theological disputes to confront the common enemy of secularism. As long as Carson says he’s a Christian, that’s enough for most other Christians.

The effort to find the cause of people’s behavior today in religious tracts written long ago, including the Bible and Quran, is mostly quixotic. People reach for religious confirmation of their own beliefs and prejudices.

In a democracy stupid people have every right to representation. Hence you sometimes get a dangerously naive narcissistic nincompoop like Adjunct Prof. Obama — and yes, the lamestream media’s shameless advocacy and double standards are in part responsible for that. But for the double standards, they’d have no standards at all.

Well, yes actually they are, as Bush’s second term attests. But Carson is more than just stupid. Some of his prejudice will go down well, but I think a lot won’t. As I’ve said before, no one has ever won with all their religious craziness out in the open. Even George kept a lid on it. Still, I’ll never say never.

I’ve just watched three hours of Fox (yes I know, take me out and shoot me). The overwhelming conclusion there is that Carson has got the better of all his critics over the last few days. They’ve also been highlighting some of Obama’s stories that didn’t pan out. Apparently, Carson has had an upsurge in donations over the last few days.

He’s so popular with certain Protestant conservative groups like the home-schoolers, it would be all but impossible to hurt him with them. A lot of them think the pope is the anti-Christ too anyway – they just think the End Times are going down a bit differently than Carson does. And they don’t blame him for that, they blame the SDA church. (It’s not his fault his church has interpreted the Bible incorrectly.)

I’m hoping the Fox Business debate tomorrow will expose that he knows nothing about economics. He’s been learning some responses – his position has changed slightly on tax, for example, since he started. But his knowledge is not good. It’s pretty bad on foreign affairs too.

However, while he might (and probably will for a while) stay popular with those who vote in Republican primaries, and polls currently show him beating Clinton head-to-head, I don’t think his appeal to the centre and left can last. USians aren’t that stupid are they? 🙂

OH, yes, someone has to do that!!

I think because of the US distaste for questioning a person’s religious beliefs, most Catholics probably don’t know what he thinks of them. It’s much worse than I portrayed above. SDAs blame the Catholics for forcing Sunday worship on the world against God’s will, consider the Vatican to be the Whore of Babylon (from the Bible), and the pope the be the Anti-Christ. I’d love a reporter to ask Carson if he thinks Pope Francis is the Anti-Christ! That’d scuttle his candidacy real quick.

Other than the End Times stuff, they’re fairly typical conservative Protestants – fairly similar to the Southern Baptists. The Southern Baptists mock the SDA version of End Times. Their own version is the correct interpretation, they insist.

I also think Carson will go the way of Rudy Giuliani, Herman Cain, Michele Bachmann, and all the other early leaders of the GOP primaries in recent years.