In the Republican YouTube debate of November 2007, presidential candidates Tom Tancredo and Mike Huckabee noted that they were in favor of the death penalty. Tancredo and Huckabee were then asked regarding the death penalty, “What Jesus Would Do?”

Neither one answered. That they were asked this question demonstrates yet again that religious tests are being applied to candidates to determine their fitness for the presidency, which runs counter to the spirit of our nation’s constitution. That they refused to answer the question betrays the candidates’ knowledge that their public faces of piety and their authoritarian policy preferences stand in opposition to one another. The Republicans’ religiously bellicose authoritarianism is internally inconsistent.