Thinker or stinker?

Maybe Kathleen or Diane will remember Damon "the Thinker" Linker's short lived blog for his Theocons book. I'll never forget my disappointment when I realized that he took it down. The kitchen gets hot, what can I say. And I was so ready to, ummm, obsess-o-stalk him. (spelling?) Well, check out a good exposé of his obscenely bad reasoning here by Lowell Brown. It turns out that the Thinker is branching out and attacking Mormons now, but only the Republican ones, which the Thinker readily admits. Here's a snippet from Lowell B:

So Linker admits that his is a partisan attack, but justifies it because he is on the side of the angels (only figuratively speaking, of course), also known as left-wing Democrats. One problem with his response is that every objection to a Mormon President that he raised in his article, based on the tenets and practices of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, and especially his objection to the Mormon belief that the President of the LDS Church is a prophet, would apply equally to a devout Mormon of the political left. If the Church President could prophesy as arbitrarily as Mr. Linker seems to believe, he could just as easily reveal a prophecy calling for the institution of a socialist welfare state as he could one opposing gay marriage. Or perhaps Mr. Linker's point is that liberal Democratic Mormons don't really in their hearts of hearts believe in all that silly religious stuff, and therefore won't muck up our laws with it. That would certainly be an offensive affront to Senator Reid. Nonetheless, that very possibly is what Mr. Linker thinks, because his response in The New Republic echoes the theme that underlies his career as a political pundit.

Where's Chavez when you need him? He could tell us which sulfurous compound this reasoning smelled like. And how 'bout that black t-shirt? Dude, that's so dark and ominous.... Why don't you lighten it up a little with this one? I love how Brown, who calls himself "the Hedgehog" wraps it up:

Linker is clearly a polemicist more than a thinker, which helps explain his rather embarrassing reasoning. One glaring example: As Ralph notes, Linker's basis for justifying the attack on Romney is that religious conservatives "bring . . . their faith with them into the public square." Excuse me, but like just about every Mormon candidate for public office I have ever known, Mitt Romney never mentions his faith in public; others do that for him, and unceasingly. The irony in Linker's fuzzy thinking is delicious, but it doesn't make his argument any less silly.