Commenting on the merry-go-round of presidential front runners occurring within the Republican Party, MSNBC's Chris Matthews delivered an imbecilic rant so bizarre that the only thing it explained was why his program trails Cartoon Network in the ratings.  It was Matthews' dazzling deduction that the elevation of certain candidates to the top of the heap, only to see them fade and drift back down in the polls, was a clear indication that the Republicans had a "hate problem."  With an extra dose of crazy, Matthews unloaded: "Their brains racked as they are by hatred, they lack the like mode. They are in no mood looking around for a politician they like. The hating is so much more satisfying."

Matthews' false indictment is a perfect case study in the classic psychological condition known as projection.  It is his hatred of Republicans, demonstrable by the little pockets of froth foaming at the sides of his mouth whenever he speaks of men like Newt Gingrich, that causes him to come to such an inexplicable conclusion.  After all, far from hating the candidates vying for the Republican nomination, most every conservative voter can attest to appreciating characteristics in each of them.

What Matthews is misdiagnosing is a process known as vetting a candidate.  Conservatives are testing the mettle of their potential nominees to see who is best prepared to take control of a country in Obama-induced chaos; chaos which ironically has occurred because Chris Matthews and his fellow liberals did not take time to do what they now chastise Republicans for doing - vet the remarkably thin resume and radical roots of the man they backed for the presidency.

But as long as the merry-go-round sequence continues for the right, having cycled through the surge of Trump, Bachmann, Perry, Cain, and now Paul and Gingrich, is it too much to ask for former Senator Rick Santorum to get a day in the sun?  While his tone at some of the debates has been unnecessarily caustic - something that could be attributed to the nature of the very few questions he actually gets to respond to - there isn't a candidate on the stage that has a more solidly conservative resume than Santorum.

In a recent profile piece highlighting the case for Santorum, Quin Hillyer asks, "could it be that the sharpest, most accomplished, most campaign-savvy, and most full-spectrum conservative in a quarter-century of presidential contests has been in the contest all along, working harder than anybody, making at least as much intellectual sense as anybody, never blowing a debate, and never failing to stand on principle?"  Without getting too carried away, Hillyer has a point, particularly with his last observation. 

When it comes to standing on principle, it's Santorum in a walk.

For all that the "conservatarian" Ron Paul types will say about Paul's devotion to small government, only Rick Santorum demonstrates a full recognition that the only way small government is possible is if our culture boasts strong families.  The way to accomplish that end is not to take the libertarian, hands-off, anything-goes philosophy towards morality in the public square.

And in terms of debt reduction, it was Rick Santorum who unabashedly and unapologetically embraced Paul Ryan's bold spending reform package when other presidential hopefuls like Newt Gingrich were casting a skeptical eye.

And while Herman Cain was confusing everybody regarding his stance on abortion (see the "I don't believe it's the government's place to decide... so the government should make it illegal" mindbender), it was Rick Santorum who articulated the only "pro-life" position that even makes sense: no exceptions.  When challenged on that principled stance in an early debate as to why he wouldn't allow abortions in the case of rape, Santorum gave a response that no pro-abortion advocate can possibly rebut: "The Supreme Court of the Unites States, on a recent case, said that a man who committed rape could not be...subject to the death penalty?yet the child conceived as a result of that rape could be. That to me sounds like a country that doesn't have its morals correct."  Game, set, match.

Maybe this is why radio phenomenon Glenn Beck recently suggested that Rick Santorum could be the next George Washington.  And while I regard any comparison to the Father of the Nation an exaggeration, Beck's point is that in a generation full of soundbite-obsessed, pandering politicians, Santorum is a man of honor.  That distinction alone should earn him a chance in the spotlight.

This column was first published at The American Thinker.

On the surface, I suppose it does sound incredible: they created a monument to honor an influential Baptist minister and they omitted any reference to God or Jesus in the featured quotations throughout the memorial.  The monument in question, of course, is the recently unveiled tribute to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in Washington, D.C.  That would be "Reverend" Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., to be precise. 

Perhaps the argument is that Biblical references were rejected because the memorial was to focus not on his work as a pastor, but rather as a civil rights crusader.  But then again, to Dr. King, the two were inseparable.  It was his faith in Jesus Christ, his belief in transcendent Moral Authority, and his allegiance to Divine Law that motivated his activism.  Not to mention that his civil rights speeches were peppered with Scriptural references as the justification for his positions. 

Take the famous "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" where King explained that, "A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law."  The entire foundation for the King civil rights movement was predicated upon the existence of the Biblical God and His eternal justice.  Conversely, the entire foundation of the secular left today is predicated upon the non-existence of the Biblical God and the acceptance of moral relativism.  Therefore, it is not surprising that the modern liberal voices who have hijacked King's movement designed a tribute to him that ignored that which was most pivotal to his cause. 

Commenting on this duplicity, Dr. Jerry Newcombe explained that, "one of the aspects of political correctness that is plaguing our times is that the elites think that all references to God and Jesus have to be expunged from all public places." 

While I wholeheartedly agree with Dr. Newcombe, I think this particular example goes a bit deeper.  I think it's clear that the purpose of this monument was to further imbed into our national psyche a caricature of Dr. King that the left has been creating for the last few decades.  By scandalously projecting their own modern liberal interpretations of ?social justice' onto him, they have redesigned King to fit the mold of a secular humanist warrior.  We shouldn't be surprised then that the monument they created in his honor omitted the things that were most important to him.  Their objective was never to celebrate the legacy of the real Dr. King - who he was, what he believed and what he did - given that those things contradict who they are, what they believe, and what they are trying to do. 

And you don't have to look to a stone sculpture to be able to understand that reality.  One of the self-proclaimed heirs to the King mantle, Jesse Jackson, recently suggested that the antics of the Occupy Wall Street protestors in Atlanta were, "an extension of the struggle for civil rights" initiated by King.  How outrageous.  How in the world can the peaceful non-violence strategy applied by Dr. King in the effort to achieve equal justice under the law possibly be tied to the violent, social upheaval produced by citizens who already have equal justice but are seeking equal outcomes through forced government redistribution (aka socialism)?

Jackson's false comparison is only slightly less offensive than those who claim to see a connection between Dr. King's street prayer vigils and the grown men prancing around American city streets in tutus and G-strings, flinging pixie dust and condoms at their gay pride parades.  King preached fidelity to Biblical morality, something eschewed by the sexual anarchists of the left.

This reinvention of Dr. King by liberals is not without consequence.  While King dreamed of the day when ours was a colorblind society, the left seems intent on bringing color into every political discussion.  In just the last two years, liberals have used race to condemn the right for their opposition to high unemployment, increased debt, stimulus spending, climate change policies, the occupy Wall Street protests, and for the mere observation that food stamp usage has skyrocketed under President Obama.  And when conservatives reasonably objected to such silly accusations, liberals pitifully declared that denying racism is actually a potent form of racism.  Beyond maddening, while the left continues making more out of the color of a man's skin than the content of his character, Dr. King's dream slips further and further beyond our grasp.

It stands to reason that if we invert our understanding of who King was, we will fail to achieve his lofty and admirable vision of racial harmony and brotherhood.  That's a far bigger problem than just a Godless statue.

This column was first published on The American Thinker.

Just as Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain predicted, he has become the most recent victim of the race-baiting left's high-tech lynching of prominent, conservative black men.  Days before the Cain sexual harassment smear emerged from the sewers of liberal trash journalism, MSNBC's Martin Bashir hosted contributor Karen Finney who proclaimed that conservatives only liked Cain because, "they think he's a black man who knows his place."   As Bashir actually thanked her on-air for making such an offensive and ignorant remark (far from being a submissive position, conservatives are supporting Cain in his effort to ascend to the highest office in the land), Finney granted, "I know that's harsh, but that's how it sure seems to me."

That's an interesting moment of candor since it now sure seems to any American paying attention that Finney and her fellow liberals dislike Cain because they think he's a black man who doesn't know his place.  Diversity of thought amongst minorities - particularly blacks - is forbidden in the church of liberalism.  Having constructed their entire political kingdom on the back of the dollars-for-votes dependency model, self-made black men who stray from the liberal plantation and threaten to carry the empowering message of personal (not government) reliance to throngs of minorities currently under the left's spell of entitlement, must be dealt with severely.  Destroying them professionally and personally is a small price to pay to keep the plantation thriving.

And so, with that greater good in mind, four lily white liberals (Jonathan Martin, Maggie Haberman, Anna Palmer and Kenneth Vogel) authored a hit piece on the prominent conservative businessman in a desperate attempt to smear him out of contention for the Republican presidential nomination.  This gutter politics is proof positive of what I've held for a long time: if you want to catch a modern day glimpse of old school white-on-black racism, behold the way white liberals treat black conservatives.

The racial motivations in this particular story cannot be missed.  This is, after all, the same political movement that scolded anyone who dared suggest that the serial infidelity and alleged sexual assaults committed by white liberal Bill Clinton were relevant to his pursuit of the presidency. 

And this is the same political movement that was so disinterested in the adultery of white liberal John Edwards who fathered a child with a campaign worker while his wife was losing her fight with cancer, that the National Enquirer tabloid out-scooped them.  And even as late as June of this year, while Edwards faced criminal indictment for his attempts to illegally cover-up the scandal, fellow white liberals like Chris Matthews continued to defend him, suggesting that his prosecution was, "one of those [politically motivated] things you read about in third world countries."

And this is the same political movement that yawned at the sexual predilections and cell phone dalliances of white liberal Anthony Weiner, eagerly defending him from the "savagery" of conservative media types like Andrew Breitbart.

Yet this same movement that had to catapult themselves over mountains of evidence in order to ignore the indiscretions of those white liberals enthusiastically skewered a black conservative based on the flimsy and unsubstantiated testimony of undisclosed sources.  The case against Cain was so weak that after bringing the accusation, the lead author of the smear, white liberal Jonathan Martin, hilariously suggested on national television that it was Cain's responsibility - not his - to explain the accusation.  This embarrassing performance didn't earn him skepticism and scorn from his fellow white liberals like Chris Matthews.  Rather, Matthews congratulated him on breaking the story.

Martin's colleague at the now forever tarnished website Politico, Mike Allen, only added to the pathetic transparency of this racial attack when he appeared on another MSNBC program, "Morning Joe."  Asked if Politico could cite any evidence beyond the allegation that Cain had made gestures "that were not overtly sexual but that made women uncomfortable," Allen ecstatically announced that their story had, "48,000 mentions" on the social media rumor mill Twitter.  The anatomy of a smear: the evidence is irrelevant...all that matters is that the accusation spreads.

The attack on Cain certainly isn't the first of its kind.  The original high-tech lynching of conservative Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas for the same stereotypical allegations, the constant attacks on "Uncle Tom" economists Thomas Sowell and Walter E. Williams, the belligerent nastiness directed at self-proclaimed welfare brat turned conservative champion Star Parker, and the persistent threats faced by tea-party Congressman Allen West all stand as stark depictions of the regard liberals have for blacks who dare to think differently than them.

If nothing else, at least we now know what PBS's Tavis Smiley meant several months ago when he promised this election would be "the most racist in the history of this Republic."  The left is seeing to that. 

This column was first published at The American Thinker.