I'VE NEVER BEEN HAPPIER TO SEE SECULAR HUMANISM LOSE

ABC reports:

A district court in Houston ruled in favor of Gov. Rick Perry today in a lawsuit trying to keep the Texas governor from participating in the Day of Prayer and Fasting event Aug. 6.

Judge Gray Miller dismissed the case after finding the plaintiffs had no standing and cited a 7th circuit ruling in favor of President Obama promoting a "national day of prayer."

... The lawsuit against Perry was filed by the Freedom From Religion Foundation....

I'm happy because the Gallup poll says Perry's beating everyone except Romney, and is really breathing down Mitt's neck. He's also doing really well in the new Pew poll, especially among the GOP voters who are paying the most attention to the race.

I want Perry to do well. The Cain moment seems to be long gone and the Bachmann moment, to judge from these polls, seems to be passing, so (unless Palin really does waltz into the contest) Perry is the probably the only person who can take the nomination away from Romney. And we want him associated with the apocalyptics, Catholic-bashers, gay-bashers, and other low-lifes linked to the rally, because (as I've said before) fundamentalism is practically the only thing hung around the GOP's neck in the past thirty years that really turns off swing voters.

There's one problem, however:

... It is still unclear if Perry will speak at the event. A spokesman for The Response said it has not been decided whether the Texas governor will speak.

Actually, forget everything I said above. Let me just say this, Governor Perry, and please remember that I'm a secular humanist atheist: HOW DARE YOU SPEAK AT THIS EVENT! IT'S BAD ENOUGH THAT YOU'RE ENDORSING IT, BUT IT'S APPALLING IF YOU ACTUALLY SPEAK AT IT!

(I just wish we could get him so angry at attempts to keep him away from the event that he just has to show up, merely to piss us off. I want him linked permanently, or at least through November 2012, to the guy who called the Catholic Church "the Great Whore" and the guy who says the Statue of Liberty is a demon idol and all the others.)

*****

Oh, but first I want there to be a really long primary fight, preferably including Bachmann, because the longer these people are in a race with one another, the further to the right they'll push one another. See, e.g., Perry's abandonment of states' rights on marriage:

Rick Perry tells The Family Research Council's Tony Perkins that he supports the federal marriage amendment because he doesn't trust activist judges to uphold the 10th.

"To not pass the federal marriage amendment would impinge on Texas and other states not to have marriage forced upon them."

So in other words, you uphold a states' right to self-determination by taking it away. Doesn't make a ton of sense.

He courted controversy last week by saying he was "fine" with New York's new gay marriage law because states had a right to make those decisions....

The more they one-up one another, on all sorts of issues, the greater the (not particularly great) chance that the public will come to regard them all as extreme. And any one of them really would be extreme economically as president, even Romney. (Ready for an Oval Office signing ceremony for Cut, Cap & Balance?) So I continue to root for self-marginalization.