Evolution
didn’t come up at the Republican debate last night, but if it had then I’m sure that Rick
Santorum would have been just as scary—and incoherent—as he was when asked
about contraception and other “social” issues.
One must listen closely to the following words
to grasp how seemingly clueless and desperate the Republican base has become if
they think that Santorum is their man. When John King of CNN, the debate
moderator in Arizona, asked Santorum to explain why he believes contraception
is dangerous, the candidate responded by talking about "the increasing
number of children being born out of wedlock in America, teens who are sexually
active. ... How can a country survive if children are being raised in homes where
it's so much harder to succeed economically? It's five times the rate of
poverty in single-parent households than it is in two-parent homes."
Set aside whether his statistics are
right. The only rational conclusion to take from these words -- if the year is
2012 and not 1512 and we aren’t about to hire Torquemada as president-- is that
Santorum was arguing //for// contraception. And yet in almost the next breath Santorum
proceeded to talk about cutting funding to Planned Parenthood. In his mind,
apparently, he was really making a case about fundamentally changing the
culture in America, dictating from Washington how people are to have children
and with whom, and certainly in wedlock. He appears to think he’s running for
pope – or maybe the vacant office of Inquisitor-- more than president.
And make
no mistake: there is a formidable consistency to the views of Rick “Sanctus”
Santorum. In an interview in 2008, Santorum criticized the
teaching of evolution in public schools and boasted about getting creationist language
into the No Child Left Behind Act. “I think there are a lot of problems with
the theory of evolution,” he said, adding that it promotes “atheist” views.
The tale
of how this man became the New Republican Standard-Bearer—how a has-been
senator, disliked for his zealotry by fellow Republicans and Democrats alike even
when in office, has come to be the Great Red Hope—tells a larger story of today’s
GOP. Even allowing for long-term trends such as the demographic shift of the
country toward the South and West—and thus growing social conservatism—it hasn’t
always been easy to understand the evolution of the Republican Party. How did a
truly Grand Old Party of brilliant champions such as Lincoln, Taft and Eisenhower
(and yes, even Nixon) become a party of genial dolts like George W. Bush and Rick
Santorum?
But perhaps Santorum's religious beliefs offer a clue. Today’s Republicans are so convinced the theory of
evolution must be wrong that they are actually standing up for reverse-evolution.
And they are not just talking the talk; they are walking the walk.
That is,
the Republican Party is devolving toward greater and greater stupidity. As “conservative”
ideology gets more absurdly detached from reality and actual life in all its
complexity, Republicans must find ever-dumber champions to ensure that their
presidential candidate doesn’t dissolve into laughter when he delivers his GOP-base-approved
talking points (or, in the case of Mitt Romney, descend into incoherence in trying to defend once-reasonable-middle positions like Romneycare). Just
as George W. Bush was a pitiful heir to step into the shoes of an Eisenhower, or
a Nixon, or even a Reagan, Santorum may actually be dumb enough to make W. look
brilliant.
Next up
in 2016: the cast of Gorillas in the Mist. Yes, Rick, you are related.
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