Maybe we're not all that close to theocracy if even Brit Hume of Fox News thinks this Utah Republican is making a fool of himself:

As if beating a five-term congressman wasn't hard enough, John Jacob said he has another foe working against him: the devil.

"There's another force that wants to keep us from going to Washington, D.C.," Jacob said. "It's the devil is what it is. I don't want you to print that, but it feels like that's what it is."

Jacob said Thursday that since he decided to run for Congress against Rep. Chris Cannon, Satan has bollixed his business deals, preventing him from putting as much money into the race as he had hoped.

Numerous business deals he had lined up have been delayed, freezing money he was counting on to finance his race....

Asked if he actually believed that "something else" was indeed Satan, Jacob said: "I don't know who else it would be if it wasn't him. Now when that gets out in the paper, I'm going to be one of the screw-loose people."

...Jacob explained that, when people try to do something good, there are frequently forces that align to stop them.

"We have a country that was created by our Heavenly Father and it was a country that had a Constitution and everyone who came to America had strong faith. If that can be destroyed that would be the adversity. . . . Whether you want to call that Satan or whoever you want to call it, I believe in the last eight months I've experienced that."

You have to admit -- most big-league pols still aren't quite this bad. Bush, for instance, doesn't say Satan hid the WMDs. (At least he doesn't say that in public.)

Though I wish I didn't have the sinking feeling that, in a generation or two, all U.S. politicians will talk this way.

Then again, maybe Brit posted a snickering link to this story only because he's standing up for GOP incumbency protection -- the congressman Jacob is trying to unseat, Chris Cannon, is a fellow Republican. (Cannon's been deemed not conservatively correct on immigration. Alas for Jacob, his hard-line immigration stance is undermined somewhat by possible immigration-law violations on his part. I guess those must have been Satan's fault, or maybe it was Satan's fault that he got caught.)

Jacob is still supported by the Godfather of Immigrant-Bashing, Congressman Tom Tancredo, and Pat Buchanan's sister Bay, who've endorsed Jacob via their Team America PAC. (I love the fact that Tancredo's PAC has the same name as that movie by the guys who created South Park.)

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UPDATE, 6/28: Jacobs lost the primary. Satan was not available for comment.