Rothenberg Raises Specter of Akin to Show Why Jackson is Bad for GOP Ticlet

It was expected that the professional pundit class and the left would start to paint Rev. E.W. Jackson, the GOP Lt. Governor Nominee, as too socially conservative and trouble for the GOP.  Yesterday, Stuart Rothenberg applied the "Todd Akin" label to Jackson. This from Rothenberg's Roll Call blog:

Until Saturday night, I had never heard of E.W. Jackson, a Harvard Law School graduate and minister who served three years in the Marine Corps and attended Harvard Divinity School.

I’ve never met the man, but I already know that Republicans in the Commonwealth of Virginia have a problem with their new nominee for lieutenant governor.

The combination of material on Jackson’s own website and the videos of Jackson speaking for himself suggest that Republicans have nominated a no-holds-barred social conservative who seems destined to utter the sort of controversial comments reminiscent of former Missouri Republican Rep. Todd Akin.

Rothenberg goes on to say that Jackson is the kind of candidate many Republicans want, to show a no compromise conservative is all that is needed for the party to win at the ballot box.  He goes on to claim that Jackson's website says he has been endorsed by Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck. 

As I have noted in recent columns and posts, many Republicans believe their party has been too compromising and needs nominees who are more conservative. Jackson would appear to fill that bill. He is an admirer of Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck (both of whom have endorsed him, according to his website), and religious themes are an important part of his agenda.

That raised my eyebrows because Limbaugh makes a point of not endorsing candidates.  So I went to Jackson's web site and finally found this:

He is the Founder of Exodus Faith Ministries, a nondenominational Christian church in Chesapeake, Virginia with a satellite in Boston, Massachusetts. On July 4, 2009, he launched S.T.A.N.D. – Staying True to America’s National Destiny (www.standamerica.us), a national organization dedicated to restoring America’s founding values which were informed by the principles found within the Jewish and Christian faiths.

STAND, with Jackson as president, aided the 2012 election effort both in Virginia and nationally. Most recently, he launched “Exodus Now”. The Exodus project is a national effort to encourage Christians and other people of moral values within the black community to leave the current Democratic Party because its current leadership has abandoned the founding principles of this Nation.

Jackson’s Youtube videos in support of that effort were played on Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and Laura Ingraham and to date have over 1.5 million views online. This is a part of his ongoing project to educate citizens on how the current leadership of the Democratic Party is not representing their values and to break the cycle of electoral dependency on the Democratic Party within the Black community.

That is the only reference on the candidate's web site that I can find to Beck and Limbaugh. Playing someone's You Tube videos may be an endorsement of the views in the video(s) but it is hardly an endorsement of one's candidacy.  In fact, no where does the Jackson web site claim such an endorsement.  So, it would appear that Rothenberg not only is trying to taint Jackson with the name of Todd Akin, but is piling on with Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh.

Gun owners need to stand with Jackson now.  The media and the left are going to work hard to define Jackson before he can raise enough money to define himself.  The only way to keep that from happening is to rally to him now.  His is a message of Liberty.