From Huffington Post: E.W. Jackson, Virginia's GOP lieutenant governor candidate, is no stranger to controversy. A conservative pastor, Jackson has previously come under fire for comparing Planned Parenthood to the Ku Klux Klan, calling gay rights "ikky" and saying President Barack Obama has a "Muslim perspective."
This week, Jackson is being skewered yet again -- this time for saying that doing yoga may leave unsuspecting people vulnerable to satanic possession.
In a post for the National Review on Wednesday, Betsy Woodruff highlighted some quotes from Jackson's 2008 book Ten Commandments to an Extraordinary Life: Making Your Dreams Come True. Among them was one about the hazards of yoga.
"When one hears the word meditation, it conjures an image of Maharishi Yoga talking about finding a mantra and striving for nirvana," Jackson wrote in his book, according to Woodruff. "The purpose of such meditation is to empty oneself. [Satan] is happy to invade the empty vacuum of your soul and possess it. Beware of systems of spirituality which tell you to empty yourself. You will end up filled with something you probably do not want."
Jackson was chosen to be the GOP nominee for Lt. Governor by way of a sparsely attended convention instead of having a statewide primary vote. You would think that they would have chosen a reasonable candidate with a level head. Instead, they chose Jackson, who is very far out of the mainstream. In an increasingly purple state like Virginia, such a candidate will have a difficult time getting elected. His running mate, Ken Cuccinelli (who is quite out of the mainstream himself) is ever-so-delicately distancing himself from Jackson's extreme statements, which show no signs of ending. Cuccinelli has stated that he will not spend his campaign defending what Jackson says.
Jackson's views will quite likely only serve to make his fellow Republican candidates (Cuccinelli for governor and Mark Obenshain for attorney general) look extreme by association. As I have stated before, it appears that the GOP has not learned from the mistakes of the 2012 election.
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