Governor Dominionist

There's just no end to the man's piety this week. Today, this:

During an interview with Neil Cavuto on FOX News this afternoon, Texas Gov. Rick Perry was asked about the criticism he’s received at home from Texas’ newspapers, fellow Republicans and opposition Democrats.

“The prophet is generally not loved in their hometown,” Perry said in response to the question.

Would that this was true; his sorry ass wouldn't be sitting in a $10-grand-a-month rental paid for by Texans right now. That follows this, posted yesterday (but retrieved from an interview last month with the illustrious James Robison):

Perry says he sees a silver lining to the devastating recession that has cost millions of families their jobs, homes, and livelihoods: it will return America to “Biblical principles” and free us from the slavery of big government:

PERRY: I think in America from time to time we have to go through some difficult times — and I think we’re going through those difficult economic times for a purpose, to bring us back to those Biblical principles of you know, you don’t spend all the money. You work hard for those six years and you put up that seventh year in the warehouse to take you through the hard times. And not spending all of our money. Not asking for Pharaoh to give everything to everybody and to take care of folks because at the end of the day, it’s slavery. We become slaves to government.

Perry twists a famous Biblical story into a bizarre anti-government tirade, comparing the U.S. government to slave masters in ancient Egypt. Skewing religion to reinforce his personal political ideology, Perry chastises people not to rely on government for help in hard times, and suggests those who are suffering have no one but themselves to blame for not making adequate preparations.

Let's review.

As the state’s longest serving governor in history, Rick Perry has pushed through a radical right-wing agenda that has left Texas with a record budget deficit, the third-highest poverty rate in the country, and the highest percentage of uninsured residents in the nation. Now he is poised to sign the most draconian state budget in modern history, one that slashes essential services for the poor and middle class while potentially laying off hundreds of thousands of public school teachers.

He has a history of using religion for perceived political gain, courting the most extreme religious conservatives as he has flirted with a run for the White House. Last week Perry invited other governors to join him at a prayer event in Houston this summer, hosted by the stridently bigoted American Family Association. Last month, over Easter weekend, he extolled Texans to “pray for rain” ... even as he tried to cut funding for the agency battling the wildfires.

Rick Perry's Dominionism is at the heart of his political hypocrisy, and in the wake of some pundits declaring him the "winner" of the debate last night in which he made no appearance, it's important that the national media -- and the voters in Iowa and New Hampshire and elsewhere -- understand precisely what a miserable, epic failure he is.

But he's not simply a poor governor and an even poorer human being, he's got a significant and dangerous God complex. Perry doesn't just talk to God in public and with the cameras rolling; it's not even that God talks back to him (like George W Bush, with whom he famously does not get along). Rick Perry believes -- this is so ironic because it's the same thing that the conservative minions continually carp about Obama -- that he is the Chosen One. The prophet. The Messiah.

In that classy "eat the poor", neoFascist kinda way, of course.

Update: Richard Connelly at the Houston Press adds a take.