Doesn’t care about the difference between a secular nation and a Muslim theocracy, and you shouldn’t either.

That’s what Newt Gingrich is afraid his country will become by the time his grandchildren are adults, if people like him do not themselves dominate. The full quote:

“I have two grandchildren — Maggie is 11, Robert is 9,” Gingrich said at Cornerstone Church here. “I am convinced that if we do not decisively win the struggle over the nature of America, by the time they’re my age they will be in a secular atheist country, potentially one dominated by radical Islamists and with no understanding of what it once meant to be an American.”

Ten years of right-wingers attempting to portray radical Muslims as the bosom buddies of liberals/secularists/atheists (take your pick; they sure treat them as identical), and it hasn’t gotten any more convincing for some reason. Sorry Newt, but I just can’t seem to swallow the idea that a people who are highly religious and morally opposed to homosexuality, abortion, feminism, and freedom of expression (which includes the freedom to blaspheme) are more like me than you.

But of course speeches like this aren’t intended for people like me. They’re intended for people whose gorges don’t rise at the mere thought of electing someone like Newt president. Those are the only people who could listen to someone describe a secular atheist country dominated by radical Muslims with a straight face, unaware of or unconcerned about (not sure which is worse) the utterly nonsensical nature of that statement. The kind of people who would actually turn up by the thousands to hear Newt speak in a church in my fair state. I do not understand these people.