Thursday, February 23, 2012

The Key to Understanding Today’s Republicans: Reverse-Evolution




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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