Santorum and Romney: Who is more Satanic?

Rick Santorum won in Alabama and Mississippi because he had greater appeal to the many Deep South voters who care primarily about religious issues. (See also here.) This situation is rather startling: Santorum is not just Catholic but Mondo Nutso Catholic -- while Protestant evangelicals and fundamentalists often view "papists" as demonic.

I'm reminded of Samson Vs. The Vampire Women, one of my favorite MST3K films, which features an occult ceremony involving a dungeon, an altar, sulfuric smoke, and bosomy women in filmy white gowns. Mike quips: "This is what most Southern Baptists think Catholic Mass is like."

Indeed so. Yet in the Baptist imagination, whatever goes on in Mormon Temples must be even worse. If you want to see the kind of anti-thinking that worked against Romney tonight, check out this site.

That's the word from Bill Keller, host of the Florida-based Live Prayer TV program as well as LivePrayer.com

"If you vote for Mitt Romney, you are voting for Satan!" he writes in his daily devotional to be sent out to 2.4 million e-mail subscribers tomorrow.

You should also view some of the presentations here. (Also see here.) I like the way the videomaker proves his point by juxtaposing the Mormon temple in Salt Lake City with the Amityville Horror house. Classy!

Y'know what's funny? None of the Protestant fundamentalist superstars were bright enough to make it this far in the Republican race. Palin, Perry and Bachmann got laughed off the stage before the first primary. (Palin didn't even declare her candidacy, although she clearly had hoped to run.) Okay, yeah, we still have Ron Paul -- but he remains an acquired taste, and his anti-war stances don't play well in the south. Aside from Paul, this country apparently has not produced a single Protestant who possesses a sufficient number of brain cells to be taken seriously as a GOP candidate, even though millions of fundamentalists (in the south and elsewhere) are desperate to vote for a co-religionist. What does this fact tell us about the educational standards in fundie-land?

And so Republicans are left with one Mormon and two Cat-licks. Both of the Cat-licks hail from the weird-n-wacky wing of the church: Santorum attends a traditionalist, ultra-conservative place of worship, while Gingrich's conversion came about under the tutelage of an Opus Dei priest.

The folks in Alabama and Mississippi must have had a hell of a time trying to figure out which of the three is the least Satanic. We now know their answer.