Republicans < Palpatine < Jesus?

The Chronicle of Higher Ed doesn't publish all its material online, but when it does, it chooses doozies like this:

Jesus is Not a Republican

... Corporate interests are treated with the kind of reverence and deference once reserved for the deity. The Bible contains something like 2,000 references to the poor and the believer's responsibility for the poor. Sadly, that obligation seems not to have trickled down into public policy. ...

I'm sure the author would be horrified, but this reminds me of nothing so much as another classic essay in which the writer compared and contrasted the Republican Party with the Empire from Star Wars -- and, seeing as how the essay was published by the Weekly Standard, it argued that the comparison was far from insulting:

The deep lesson of Star Wars is that the Empire is good. ... Palpatine believes that the political order must be manipulated to produce peace and stability. When he mutters, "There is no civility, there is only politics," we see that at heart, he's an esoteric Straussian.