Following his outburst against gay service members at a 2011 Virginia Family Forum meeting, E.W. Jackson claimed that God is behind the Tea Party movement. Jackson, who is now the Republican nominee for lieutenant governor of Virginia, said that the 2008 election “broke my heart” and didn’t understand why God would allow the “grave danger” of Obama’s election…until realizing it was part of God’s plan to beget the Tea Party.

“The Tea Party is a move of God to stir this nation’s back to its conscience and back to its senses,” Jackson told conservative activists. “I remember saying, God we prayed Lord but we didn’t win, but you know what God said to me? ‘You won, you won.’ I couldn’t figure out what that meant until I began to hear some of the things I heard and then I realized what it meant: it meant that maybe the best thing that has ever happened to this country was the election of the last president because he has awakened a sleeping giant and I trust that now that we’re awake we will never go back to sleep again.”

Of course, recent polls show that opposition to the Tea Party nationwide and among Virginians has hit record highs.