Texas governor ‘proud’ to be in Glenn Beck’s ‘army’

It seems conservative firebrands are seeing God’s punishment everywhere these days.

First there was televangelist Pat Robertson who in January told his audience that the Haitian earthquake was punishment for Haiti’s founders having signed a “pact with the devil.”

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Then came radio host Rush Limbaugh, who last week suggested that the Iceland volcano was “God’s punishment” for the US passing health care reform.

Now a Texas state representative has taken the notion a step further, declaring that an elected official — rather than a natural disaster — is a sign of God’s displeasure.

“I believe that Barack Obama is God’s punishment on us today,” Rep. Leo Berman of Texas’ 6th district told the audience at a Glenn Beck appearance in Tyler, Texas. Berman added, “But in 2012, we are going to make Obama a one-term president.”

Berman, whose comments were first reported on by the Tyler Morning Telegraph, appeared alongside a number of other prominent Texas conservatives at the Oil Palace arena on Saturday night, including Texas Governor Rick Perry.

Perry “described Beck as a national leader of a powerful group sending a message to the current administration and Congress about Washington, DC, how to control spending and Americans taking their country back,” the Morning Telegraph reported.

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“I consider myself proud to be in that army,” Perry said.

Rep. Berman has built a track record of controversial comments. Last year, activists launched a now-defunct Web site, CensureLeo.com, after Berman told a Chinese-American lawyer to “kiss his ass” and “go home,” presumably to China.

In 2007, Berman delivered what one blogger called a “hate-filled speech” in which he claimed that “illegal immigrants were bringing Polio, the plague, leprosy, tuberculosis, malaria, Chagas Disease and Dengue Fever to the United States in alarming numbers,” the Capitol Annex reported.