If you ask me to pick a winner at the Democratic debate on night two in Miami, I would have said Pete Buttigieg.  He came off as reasonable, clear-thinking, pithy, and pleasant.  He respected time limits.  I didn't agree with him on anything, but he gave a sense of coming from rational grounding.  Maybe his leftie ideas could be tempered with real-world realities.  Maybe he could be persuaded...

But then, then, then, then...he couldn't stop himself.  The transcript:

We have to talk about one other thing, the Republican Party likes to cloak itself in the language of religion. Now, our party doesn't talk about that as much, largely for a very good reason, which was we are committed to the separation of church and state. We stand for people of any religion and no religion. But we should call out hypocrisy, for a party that associates itself with Christianity."

Buttigieg whipped out for about the umpteenth time his unsolicited opinion about just how un-Christian all those inadequate, wicked, dare-I-say sinful Christians out there really are, hooking his argument up to the border surge issue.  Gotcha.  Bad Christians.  Not like good-Christian me, that paragon of all virtue-signals.

It was about as attractive as a fart in church.

Here's the video of him coming out with his Inner Scold at no one's request:

What's interesting is that most of the rabid left, whose Democratic Party he identifies with, prefer to launch attacks on Christianity itself.  They hate Christianity, not to mention the idea of God.  It's obvious in their court cases challenging this cross or that manger scene in public space, prayer in public schools, crosses at military cemeteries, etc.  Democrats themselves have booed God at one of their recent party conventions.  President Obama rarely ever went to church services, and his references to faith in speeches always threw in the non-faith of atheists into his mix, since it was so important to his base.  Pete himself hasn't complained a bit. 

Buttigieg, though, approaches the matter differently — by going after Christians themselves, not Christianity.  Me good, you bad, so vote me into absolute power, you miserably inadequate sinners.

He does this a lot, it's what makes him tick, and apparently no one has tried to stop him.  J.E. Dyer at Liberty Unyielding has a good list of his past incidents playing the religious scold, doing the exact same thing earlier:

First, as I recall (although there may have been something earlier), he said he questions whether Donald Trump really believes in God.

Next thing you know Buttigieg was saying evangelical Christians are hypocrites for voting for Trump.

Then he started in on the quality of Vice President Mike Pence's Christian beliefs, which Buttigieg lambasted while contrasting them, most unfavorably, with his own.  (Pence, it is to be noted, has said nothing at all about Buttigieg's Christianity, his relationship with God, or his sexual orientation.  Buttigieg is having this argument with himself.)

Had enough of this crap?  He seems to like Christianity because he believes it gives him a license to scold Christians as inadequate for his needs.

With Christians a sizable portion of the electorate, file under "stupid."  Playing the part of the Taliban enforcing virtue, the Savonarola defending the faith against heretics — or rather more specifically in the U.S. context, the Cotton Mather or the Jonathan Edwards intoning about "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" is an old American Pecksniffian tradition, already well lampooned by Mark Twain and other literary giants.  Rest assured, Pete, nobody wants it back.

Image credit: Grabien/NBC screen shot.