Howling Mad Mourdock

The Romney campaign has said that the above ad will continue running in support of Republican Senate candidate Richard Mourdock of Indiana -- this despite Mourdock being the latest Neanderthal idiot to make a really ill-advised comment about abortion. Surely you've heard by now, but Mourdock said Tuesday night that pregnancies resulting from rape are "something that God intended to happen," which echoes in a slightly more delicate manner Tea Party darling Sharron Angle's argument a couple of years back that a rape pregnancy was an opportunity to turn "a lemon situation into lemonade."

Look, don't be shocked by this. Don't be shocked at all. This is what the modern conservative movement believes, lock, stock and barrel -- Romney included. He may be trying to "distance himself" from Mourdock's comments, but he agrees with them entirely and so does his running-mate, Paul Ryan; any concession otherwise is made simply for the sake of political expediency (because an artful politician knows that you can think these things but you can't under any circumstances say them out loud). These people have ceded their ability to be reasonable and humane to the will of a magical deity they believe in to the point of madness and whose demands they expect everyone else to bend to as well.

Chances are this will be my next Banter column, so stay tuned.