It’s Interesting…

It’s interesting that on anything related to science (climate change, whether people are born gay, whether a fertilized egg is a person), the GOP  insists on imposing  fundamentalist Christian views on everyone.

But when it comes to economic policy, they have turned to an atheist — Ayn Rand — who preached unregulated capitalism, an unfettered free market that is as extreme to many of us as the GOP’s theocratic policies.

That’s why I don’t understand today’s GOP bravado that Mitt was a lousy candidate, but Paul Ryan will do just great in 2016.  He’s with Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock on abortion, and with Rand on economics.  He’s the personification of what lost last night.

Karl Rove says that this country is still center right.  Even if that’s the case, his party is not center right, it is now far, far right.  As the GOP has moved more to the right, the Dems have not moved equally left, so they are now the more centrist  — and saner-seeming — party.

I would say this is a centrist country, that tilts left or right depending on the issue and how far each party is from the center.  If politics in America is played between the 20-yard lines, the GOP is out in the parking lot, with very few young or female or minority folks at its sad little tailgate party.

 

It’s About the Big Bang, Not Big Bird

The GOP tells us that this is a watershed election.  I agree, but not for the reasons they say.  This isn’t about whether or not we’re going to switch to vouchers for Medicare or what the Medicaid budget is going to be.  This is about whether we’re going to continue down the Republican path to the Dark Ages.

To their shame, the GOP has let extremists take over their party at the state and national level.   The question on November 6 is whether we’re going to let the crazies take over our country.

I grew up believing that some things were settled in our society — that evolution was established science, that Keynesianism was established economics.  But now the GOP presents laughable, long-discredited science and economics as the truth.

With 435 congressional districts, we’re going to get people like Todd “Legitimate Rape” Akin.  But fringe people like him should not be elevated to the Senate.  And they definitely shouldn’t become Vice President, but Paul Ryan and Todd Akin are Tweedledee and Tweedledum on social issues.  Ryan is a little more careful about what he says in public, but their views and votes are the same.

We are outraged about the Taliban shooting of 14-year-old Malala Yousafzai in Pakistan because she defended the right of girls to go to school.  We rightly think the Taliban are sick barbarians.  But if Ryan and Akin had their way, we’d have 14-year-old rape and incest victims dying from illegal abortions.  That is every bit as sick and barbaric.

I voted for Bush 43 in 2004 and McCain in 2008 because I was afraid of the radical Muslims.   I’m still a registered Republican, but I’m voting for Obama because I’m afraid of the radical Christians.  I want to defeat the Christian Taliban here at home.