Jesus was a Liberal

John Hawkin's latest article is pretty lazy - basically he takes five flawed statements, attributes them to Liberals (though in at least a few cases conservatives say them too), and then proceeds to knock down his carefully propped up straw men. The third is, of course, this bit of bumper stickery.

Jesus, as Mike Huckabee famously said, "was too smart to ever run for public office," and he was not, in any way, shape, or form, a liberal -- or for that matter, a conservative.

If you're a liberal and happen to believe otherwise, I'm sure you'd be in for a rude awakening if you ever had an actual discussion with Jesus about, say gay marriage, premarital sex, abortion, Islam, or prayer in schools. In fact, if Jesus were to come back tomorrow, chances are they'd be calling him JesusHitler on Daily Kos by the end of the week. Not that we conservatives would escape chastisement either, but at least we're not so arrogant as to believe that our Lord and Savior would be filling in while Rush Limbaugh is on vacation.

To a certain extent I agree with Hawkins - in an actual encounter between Jesus and our modern political parties, neither party is likely to come off that well. That said, there are plenty of Conservative Christians who believe that you can't be a good Christian and a Liberal. Some of them even write at Townhall. I think you have to factor that into the Jesus was a Liberal sticker; it is liberals reclaiming their connection to Christ. A connection that many conservatives would deny. While I agree that it isn't the most well thought out argument (particularly since it seems to turn it around and imply that Conservatives aren't Christians), I can understand it.