Newt Gingrich claims secular-Islamist alliance?

With the 2012 presidential elections coming up, potential candidates for the Republican nomination are out and about testing the waters. We hear from the majority of them that they are considering running against the "socialist, Kenyan, secret Muslim." They just have to decide whether they have the support they need in order to endure the charlie foxtrot that is presidential politics. One way to get a rise out of your base is apparently to make outlandish claims that garner you media attention. Take Newt Gingrich for example. Speaking at John Hagee's Cornerstone Church in San Antonio, Gingrich offered this dire outlook for his grandchildren, "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." Umm, what?

Now, to understand how someone who is considering running for our nation's highest office could say something like that and be taken seriously, we have to understand the crowd to which he was speaking. John Hagee's church in San Antonio is one of the most influential mega-churches in the U.S. Hagee is known to have far-reaching ties in Washington and with Israel. The people who fill the pews at Cornerstone Church are probably far more likely to vote for someone who shares their Christian conservative values (at least vocally claims to share their values despite being on his third wife) than they are someone who may take a more moderate approach to their religion and politics. It is easy for the Newts of the country to stroll into that environment and make absurd claims like he did. Most of them probably didn't think twice about what he said because they have probably been filled with similar nonsense claims for years. Claims such as the frequently heard (at least on Fox News and out of the mouths of conservative Christian politicians and pundits) erroneous idea that Christians are a persecuted minority in the U.S.