In 2010, Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas published his book American Taliban, which detailed his belief that “fundamentalist Muslims [are] basically hard-right Christians…American [religious conservatives] may be more constrained by American society and laws than their Middle Eastern counterparts, but…their goals are the same.” This past weekend, one current and one former Daily Kos writer carried on the tradition of lumping the two groups.

On Sunday, Daily Kos’s Susan Grigsby opined, “It is very difficult to find much space between the coming Christian caliphate, which reveres the Second Amendment as a holy text, and the one set up by [ISIS] in Syria and Iraq.” Grigsby suggested that Ted Cruz, strongly influenced by his theocratic father, would be a suitable leader for such a U.S. regime.

From Grigsby’s article, headlined “Ted Cruz, the Perfect Candidate For the Coming Christian Caliphate” (bolding added):

Perhaps you have heard of the cult of Dominionism, or Christian Reconstructionism. In brief, it’s a belief in a Christian caliphate which will battle the unbelievers at a place called Armageddon, located in Israel. Which, by the way, is why Cruz is such a staunch defender of Israel—Jews have to stick around so they can die in the final battle. Before that can happen though, it is necessary that they first create a theocracy here at home. According to Chris Hedges: It fuses with the Christian religion the iconography and language of American imperialism and nationalism, along with the cruelest aspects of corporate capitalism. Think Ayn Rand’s John Galt with a cross in one hand and an AR-15 in the other. It is very difficult to find much space between the coming Christian caliphate, which reveres the Second Amendment as a holy text, and the one set up by Daesh in Syria and Iraq—except the location of the final battle. Daesh says it will occur in a village named Dabiq, which is north of Aleppo in Syria. But both groups want to implement the laws of their gods and look forward to the end times when their gods will beat up everyone else’s gods. As hard as the Christians have been working toward their kingdom, Daesh is way ahead of them as far as theocracies go. But perhaps there is hope for the home team in the form of a Canadian-born, Houston-raised, Princeton and Harvard-educated Southern Baptist senator from Texas.

And Washington Monthly blogger David Atkins, a frequent Daily Kos contributor until about a year ago, argued on Saturday that “to most rational people there is very little dividing line between the agendas of conservative Muslim extremists and conservative Christian ones. Both groups are strongly in favor of weaponizing the public, both are devoted to the imposition of theocracy, and both are opposed to expanded rights for women and those of alternate sexual orientations…To each other, they couldn’t be any different. To the rest of us they’re all the same: dangerous extremists drunk on a toxic brew of misogyny, anti-modernism and extremist hatred.”