lol...Okay, I know the subject line there is a bit inflammatory and not altogether accurate. But you have to wonder about a party that believes the answer to its problems is Sara Palin.

It's as if the GOP is attacking its own intellectuals. How long can an educated person in the Republican Party stand it? I'm the only college grad in my family (I'm also the only Democrat and the only religious skeptic--everybody else is Southern Baptist and very devout). I love my family, so I don't mind having to stomach horseshit like "Obama is a terrorist!" and "Obama is a Muslim!" I just go play Wii with my six-year-old nephew until the old bastards get their silly nonsense out of their systems.

A political party is not a family, and one's loyalty resides in one's shared values. But those shared values are not enough of a balm to heal the sick, utterly backward radicalism of the Religious Right and the Sara Palins of the party. Yes, I say radicalism: anybody who thinks they can speak in tongues or that the Earth is only 6,000 years old is an intellectual knuckle-dragger, a slobbering radical of the first order. Can you, for just a moment, imagine a discussion between William Buckley and Sara Palin?

The rightwing media doesn't help, either. Rush Gasbaugh and Ann Coulter and the rest gave up any desire to actually debate (if they were ever interested at all, that is). Coulter doesn't give a flip about changing my mind, or anybody else's. She's got a secure number of doofuses to rely on for book sales. Rush Limbaugh just preaches to the choir, and what a choir it is: a million idiots who love nothing more than to hear their own opinions spat back at them ad nauseum. Want to know why Air America failed? Because liberals don't need to be told what to think.

Which is to say, no intellectual really needs to be told what to think. Christopher Buckley said it best: "I didn't leave the Republican Party; the Republican Party left me." It's a shame, because while I am a Democrat, I do think both parties and both ideologies are necessary to the health of this nation. It's just that today's GOP isn't really ideological. The average Republican voter will choose any candidate that hates gays, Planned Parenthood, and the ACLU, no matter what that candidate actually does.

Our next president spent 20 years gushing about a man who believes the U.S. government invented AIDS. To kill black people.

And he never had the guts to tell the preacher he was wrong.

You don't want to go there, liberals.

CJinPA:

Our next president spent 20 years gushing about a man who believes the U.S. government invented AIDS. To kill black people.

And he never had the guts to tell the preacher he was wrong.

You don't want to go there, liberals.

How is that any worse than a church that says abortion will bring hellfire and holy damnation on America? When Obama expresses a desire to push secular members out of the DNC, get back to me. That's the real difference. GOPernuts are absolutists, which is just another word for radical.

So many posters seem to know the absolute Truth. My father turned out to be right (I disagreed with him at the time) when he suggested that the moment when you accept the fact that you don't ever really know anything is the moment when you really begin to know some things: that when you denigrate another's beliefs you block your ability to learn new things; that when you turn away from some beliefs that that is a decision for you alone and shouldn't be a reason to mandate that others do the same or be punished.

You are entitled to your presumtions, assumptions and beliefs as well as your conclusions, and you may not mandate that I must believe as you do. And neither of us should have to be assaulted by insults, innuendo and verbal abuse as a result.

But I did enjoy the synopsis of your points of view.

Yes, let's go there.

The Republicans aligned themselves with a woman who had ties to an anti-American political party in Alaska, and they didn't call her out for that.

Let's continue there

A majority of the Republican Presidential candidates felt it necessary to deny that evolutionary biology exists: Preferring the literal words of the King James English Bible as Creation Science. That is about as much conclusiveproof as I need. How about you?

How is that any worse than a church that says abortion will bring hellfire and holy damnation on America? When Obama expresses a desire to push secular members out of the DNC, get back to me. That's the real difference. GOPernuts are absolutists, which is just another word for radical.

Obviously, the ‘damnation’ thing is a religious belief that one can hold, or not. Telling people that the government invented AIDS as an act of genocide is simply untrue. And racially divisive. And dangerous, as it hampers prevention efforts.

So, McCain tried to push secular members out of the RNC? Or Bush? Huh?

I am not a religious conservative. Any Republican stance I take is based on non-religious terms. I acknowledge the nuts on the right; it’s just that Democrats can’t acknowledge the nuts on the left. Even if they plant bombs, or spew racial hatred for a room full of cheering congregants, for pete’s sake.

I don’t think Obama is a dope, or an extremist. But I know that he will associate with them for political gain. Because he has.

Anse,

good post. I am a recovering Rush Limbaugh "dittohead". Got tired of hearing the same crap over and over. I have also abandoned hope for the Republican party as presently constituted. Choosing Palin as a running mate = idiotic. Buckley vs. Palin, that would only be a good match up on Celebrity Death Match.

How does Mike Huckabee get any votes? His comments on other religions and minorities barely hide some of his obviously prejudiced views. (I won't say bigoted, way over used lately)

We republicans are going to have to come around to the fact that the majority of Americans are living in an industrialized society. If things go bad we can't go back to the farm and live off of our chickens and gardens. We have to have some social safety nets. We have to give ground on issues like universal health care.

A majority of the Republican Presidential candidates felt it necessary to deny that evolutionary biology exists: Preferring the literal words of the King James English Bible as Creation Science. That is about as much conclusiveproof as I need. How about you?

Would those be the candidates that Republican voters DIDN’T support?

Yes, it’s embarrassing to me as a Republican to see that. I admit it. But 35% of registered Democrats believe Bush knew about the 9-11 attacks in advance. Dems have a religious-like belief in global warming, a child-like belief in the power of diplomacy, and superficial understanding of human nature (how’s that experiment with single-parent households going?)

And, of course, the “Government Invented AIDS” thing. The difference is, The Daily Show pokes fun at the nuts on the right. The nuts on the left are OFF LIMITS.

CJinPA:

Yes, it’s embarrassing to me as a Republican to see that. I admit it. But 35% of registered Democrats believe Bush knew about the 9-11 attacks in advance.

Bollocks.

CJinPA:

Dems have a religious-like belief in global warming,

How exactly is agreeing with the vast preponderance of scientific evidence "religious-like?"

CJinPA:

. The difference is, The Daily Show pokes fun at the nuts on the right. The nuts on the left are OFF LIMITS.

Actually, the Daily Show pokes fun at the left all the time. Perhaps not so much as they do the right, but they definitely are equal opportunity satirists.

The Republicans aligned themselves with a woman who had ties to an anti-American political party in Alaska, and they didn't call her out for that.

By “ties” you mean her videotaped welcome as governor?

Are you seriously equating this with launching your political career in the home of a man who wanted to plant a nail bomb at an Army social dance (only to see it blow up during construction and kill the bombers), and whose wife went to prison rather than testify against associates who gunned down a police officer?

How did Obama get away with that without at least admitting it was a horrible lapse in judgment?

Bollocks

So you’re a 9-11 conspiracy theorist, or not, or…?

How exactly is agreeing with the vast preponderance of scientific evidence "religious-like?"

Agreeing with evidence is swell. A zealous refusal to consider dissenting evidence? Not so.

“I am a skeptic…Global warming has become a new religion.” - Nobel Prize Winner for Physics, Ivar Giaever.

Personally, I take the threat of climate change very seriously. But I get suspicious when I see science become a movement where dissent is shouted down.

The Daily Show et al generally feel safe poking fun at the left when it deems Democrats as not left enough, or on non-ideological grounds (Ill. Governor, etc.) Poking fun at a silly, liberal idea? Haven’t seen it. Do you recall such a moment?

We do not mean "just" Palin's videotaped welcome to the AIP. We also mean that her husband had been a registered member for several years. So what was Palin doing when her husband was involved with the AIP?

Her husband was a registered member of a party that used to adocate asking voters if the state should leave the union, but went on to elect a governor of Alaska in 1990 and has not advocated that in the time he was a member. Is that the story?

Do you REALLY want to compare this to soliciting support and funds from a group that bombed the Capitol, Pentagon and police stations?

CJinPA:

Are you seriously equating this with launching your political career in the home of a man who wanted to plant a nail bomb at an Army social dance (only to see it blow up during construction and kill the bombers), and whose wife went to prison rather than testify against associates who gunned down a police officer?

So when you drank the right-wing Kool-Aid, was it grape flavored? Did they spike it with Vodka?

This has been debunked over and over again. Obama wasn't at the man's house.

And Palin was married to a member of an anti-American organization. That's one hell of a tie. And she welcomed the organization? An organization that openly wants out of the Union? How in any way is that good?

At least Obama - even if it was for political reasons - dropped Wright. Neither McCain nor Palin did anything to distance themselves from the anti-American group from Alaska.