Rick Santorum has found someone even more anti-gay and anti-Islam than he is, so naturally he has installed him as his honorary Chair of his Florida presidential campaign. Rev. O’Neal Dozier, 53, has said gays “make God want to vomit.” He is well-known is GOP circles, but was all but washed up until the Tea Party and Rep. Allen West came along. He’s connected to the Bush family (Jeb Bush is the former Governor of Florida,) and claims to be “a prayer warrior who faithfully spends time in his own prayer closet and teaches his flock to pray.”
Adam Weinstein at Mother Jones has an extensive profile on Rev. Dozier, writing,
Dozier opened his church in 1985 and immediately began preaching a different kind of gospel. “We teach and preach on the cultural issues,” he says in a recent video. “We also teach and preach on the war on terror. We teach and preach on the dangers of Islam and Islamic fascism here.” He says he was heavily influenced by the work of the Rev. D. James Kennedy, a founding father of the Christian right who started the annual Reclaiming America for Christ political conference at his church complex just down the street in Fort Lauderdale.
Attending functions like Kennedy’s helped Dozier build a valuable political Rolodex. As the GOP sought ways to connect with minorities, it took a shine to Dozier, and he was happy to deliver their messages at his pulpit. In 2001, Governor Jeb Bush appointed him to serve on one of Florida’s key judicial nominating commissions. “I helped him pick his judges in the state of Florida,” Dozier said. He also went on to visit with President George W. Bush in the White House. And when Charlie Crist campaigned to take over the governor’s office from Bush, Dozier sat on the campaign’s “Strengthening Florida’s Families” panel. Dozier later remarked at a prayer breakfast that the Lord Jesus had told him, “Charlie Crist will be the next governor of the state of Florida.”
“The tea party is a godly ordained party,†Dozier has said. Also: “God is not a socialist. God is not a Robin Hood.â€As Republicans courted him, Dozier continued to express some of his most extreme views. At a Reclaiming America convention in 2003, Dozier declared that “We should take control of every facet of society.” He added that God was “100 percent for capital punishment. Oh, yeah, God knew some were going to slip through, a few innocent ones. He knew that. But you cannot have a society without capital punishment.”
He reserved his greatest fervor for that “paramount of sins,” homosexuality—which he declared was “something so nasty and disgusting that it makes God want to vomit.”
In 2006, he declared war on a local Islamic group trying to build a mosque in the neighborhood. “One day,” he intoned, “our grandchildren will live under the grips of sharia law. It’s coming our way. Islam has a plan, a 20-year plan, to take over America from within. And they’re doing it.” The feds charged a charity that Dozier and local Republican activists had supported with swindling $3 million from Haitian immigrants. And Dozier started asking Florida judicial nominees if they were “God-fearing” and in favor of anti-sodomy laws. The GOP establishment began to sour on Dozier. By the summer of 2006, Crist and Jeb Bush had both dumped him.
Of course, it makes perfect sense that Rick Santorum, himself totally washed up for years after his historic defeat as a Senator, would embrace Dozier.
Go back and read Weinstein’s fascinating piece. It will give you some insight into those whom Santorum believes are fit to represent him.