True Believers

As promised, today's column over at the Daily Banter has to do with Richard "Howling Mad" Mourdock and his BFF, Mitt Romney.

Here's an excerpt:

"Mourdock’s status as one of the new breed of unpolished, ideologically pure Tea Party darlings that have seized the imagination of the right over the past four years — make no mistake, in direct response to the election of Barack Obama — is really what’s at the center of this latest mess for the GOP. He’s like a child. He doesn’t know any better. He just blurts out what’s on his mind. Mourdock’s the picture of unfiltered conservative sincerity. And that’s what allowed him to wipe the floor with longtime Indiana Republican Senator Dick Lugar back in May of this year: the fact that he appeals to the batshit crazy beliefs and superstitions of the base and, upon winning, immediately throws down the eliminationist gauntlet by declaring that his idea of bipartisanship in Washington is 'Democrats coming to the Republican point of view.' The no-longer-fringe right of today eats that crap up like soma."

Read the Rest Here

Adding:



That didn't take long at all. Boo-ya.

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.

Quote of the Day

"I have a mindset that says bipartisanship ought to consist of Democrats coming to the Republican point of view."

-- Tea Party darling Richard Mourdock, who defeated long-time Republican Senator and relative moderate Dick Lugar in yesterday's Indiana primary

So there you have it. Today's Republican party summed up in one neat little sentence. It's no longer about politics or compromise or working together for the good of the country -- it's about obstruction at all costs and rabid, eliminationist fanaticism. And it's going to doom the United States government to gridlock until the inevitable finally happens: the Republican party as we know it purifies itself into extinction.