Comment 35 by Functional Atheist :

Take a breath people. The candidates are spouting nonsense, but please bear in mind that Iowa's peculiar caucus system favors "true believers" in both the literal and figurative sense.

At a caucus, voters don't merely show up and cast a ballot, they actively attempt to sway one another in town-hall style meetings, and among Iowa Republicans nobody is more fervent than conservative Catholics and Evangelical Protestants. As a consequence, pandering to the pious is a specific tactic in the run-up to the Iowa caucuses.

The rhetoric will tone down significantly in New Hampshire, and it will be ratcheted down even further during the general election.

I'm not convinced that emulating the purple rhetoric of these candidates is helpful. Jerry Coyne is a good blogger, but his headline, in this case, is alarmist. America's interminably long election process will be even more unbearable if we have to endure, even at this site, panting partisan prose for the next 50 weeks.

So what you are saying is that at best they are not completely crazy, only partially crazy, and are sadistically using religion, a completely non-political issue, to sway the minds of the sheep.

Yah thats much better....

Also, the title is not alarmist, because its exactly what these right wing nuts said in detail. It's not a fictional story, its not a cherry picked quote out of context, its the facts.