... journalists should avoid double standards. If you roll your eyes when conservatives trumpet Barack Obama's links to Chicago socialists and academic radicals, you probably shouldn't leap to the conclusion that Bachmann's more outré law school influences prove she's a budding Torquemada. If you didn't spend the Jeremiah Wright controversy searching works of black liberation theology for inflammatory evidence of what Obama "really" believed, you probably shouldn't obsess over the supposed links between Rick Perry and R. J. Rushdoony, the Christian Reconstructionist guru.

But doesn't Bachmann still claim law professor and Christian Reconstructionist John Eidsmoe as a great inspiration?  Still, the Minnesota congresswoman's relationship with Eidsmoe is probably a molehill of concern compared with the mountain of issues concerning the Texas governor.

Douthat's piece is part of the second volley in recent years seeking to downplay dominionism in the Repubican Party. Douthat was joined this time by Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson who contributed by mowing down a series of straw-men, notably: "Pluralism is defined as the silencing of religious people." He also framed critics of dominionism in false equivalencies, such as, "Thin charges of Dominionism are just another attempt to discredit opponents rather than answer them -- in the same tradition as thin charges of Kenyan anti-colonialism."

Gerson's deflections are understandable since he has a controversial religious affiliation of his own. He is a member of a Virginia Episcopal  parish that broke away from the American Episcopal Church to in order to affiliate with the militantly anti-gay Archbishop Peter Akinola's Anglican Church of Nigeria.

Douthat and Gerson both try to equate President Obama's past affiliation with Rev. Jeremiah Wright and his volatile remarks on race. (For the record, I also registered my criticism of Wright). But regardless of how one feels about Wright, Obama distanced himself from the source of controversy while Perry has not.

Perry chose to move closer to Cindy Jacobs and C. Peter Wagner even after NAR's agenda and anti-Catholicism became an issue. Many of the apostles who shared the stage with Governor Perry on August 6th at Houston's Regent Stadium, are in the network organized by Wagner, who has declared that the Roman Catholic Church is under the sway of a great demon he calls the "Queen of Heaven" and promotes spiritual warfare against Catholicism.

Perry might consider the example of Senator John McCain (R-AZ) who backed away from John Hagee after his sordid views on Catholicism came to light.

Conservatives of the faith have an abysmal record when it comes to anti-Catholicism. They tend to be like Bill Donohue who finds the flimsiest excuses to give religious bigotry a pass -- or who, like Ross Douthat, simply ignore it.

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