Michele Bachmann is now the frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination, according to one poll, but there is obviously a lot more we need to know about all the candidates before making a choice. But Bachmann is already being Palinized, and Jeffrey Goldberg warns that Bachmann is a “theocrat.” He reports that:
At a recent meeting of the Republican Jewish Coalition, she said, “I am convinced in my heart and in my mind that if the United States fails to stand with Israel, that is the end of the United States.” She went on: “We have to show that we are inextricably entwined, that as a nation we have been blessed because of our relationship with Israel, and if we reject Israel, then there is a curse that comes into play.”
It wasn’t recent, and it wasn’t all she said.
In February 2010, Bachmann was asked about the relationship of support for Israel to American security and gave a three-minute extemporaneous answer. After the two sentences quoted above, she said this:
And my husband and I are both Christians, and we believe very strongly the verse from Genesis [Genesis 12:3 – “I will bless them that bless thee, and curse them that curse thee”]; we believe very strongly that nations also receive blessings as they bless Israel. It is a strong and beautiful principle.
Right now in my own private Bible time, I am working through Isaiah . . . and there is continually a coming back to what God gave to Israel initially, which was the Torah and the Ten Commandments, and I have a wonderful quote from John Adams that if you will indulge me [while I find it] . . . [from his February 16, 1809 Letter to François Adriaan van der Kemp]:
"I will insist that the Hebrews have done more to civilize men than any other nation. If I were an atheist, and believed in blind eternal fate, I should still believe that fate had ordained the Jews to be the most essential instrument for civilizing the nations. If I were an atheist of the other sect, who believe or pretend to believe that all is ordered by chance, I should believe that chance had ordered the Jews to preserve and propagate to all mankind the doctrine of a supreme, intelligent, wise, almighty sovereign of the universe, which I believe to be the great essential principle of all morality, and consequently of all civilization."
. . . So that is a very long way to answer your question, but I believe that an explicit statement from us about our support for Israel as tied to American security, we would do well to do that.
I am not sure that belief in a key promise of the Torah makes one a theocrat.
Perhaps before dismissing Bachmann’s views on the Biblical blessing and curse — in both history and current affairs — one should read Paul Johnson on the “the pathology of nations” (with his discussion of the relationship between anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism), and also read Dennis Prager on “The Genesis Prediction.”
This is not a JCI endorsement for president. The coveted JCI endorsement generally does not come out until the day before the election, as it did in 2008. Looking back at that 2008 endorsement, however, JCI stands by it, as well as the 2008 prediction about the Second Coming that year.
For more on Goldberg's views on Bachmann, read the perceptive pieces by two Seths: Seth Lipsky and Seth Mandel.