GOP’s descent into madness

The US Republican Party is quickly sliding off the edge (of sanity, of reality, the planet…). Their Congressional caucus routinely opposes everything the Democrats and Obama Administration propose—even when they’re Republican ideas—for no reason other than to oppose everything that the Democrats and Obama Administration do or say. Even when it’s Republican.

First the party was saddled with christianist extremists trying to impose an American christianist Taleban regime, then they had the “something-for-nothing” teabagger extremists pushing the interests of corporate elites. Now, it’s war criminals as their candidates. It’s almost enough to make you feel sorry for the party.

Writing on The Daily Beast, Benjamin Sarlin details the stories of two Republican Congressional candidates who committed war crimes in Iraq, but who escaped prosecution and then became the focus of far-right adulation.

One Republican candidate killed two unarmed Iraqi detainees, emptying his gun into their bodies, shooting 50-60 times. Then he placed a propaganda sign on their corpses. And this criminal is not only proud of his crime, he added: “The idea of people being prosecuted for doing their jobs in what is in fact a war—it struck me that members of Congress were being disingenuous. What our men and women were doing in enhanced interrogations was not torture…”

The other Republican candidate apprehended an Iraqi policeman he thought was planning an ambush. He stood and watched as his men beat the policeman, then he fired a shot by the Iraqi’s head to get him to "talk". The Republican says this torture—for that’s what it was—“saved lives”, but no evidence of a “plot” was ever found. Still, his crimes make him “a decorated war hero who’s served with distinction” to the former half-term Governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin, who, of course, endorsed him (as Keith Olbermann so rightly says of her, “that woman is an idiot.”)

So, this is the face of the new Republican Party: Religious extremists pushing for a far-right christianist theocracy in America, far-right pseudo-libertarians pushing for a corporate takeover of America, and war criminals running for Congress. And this party actually believes that people should vote for them, rather than against them?!

The Democratic Party is far—very far—from perfect, but they have one overriding virtue: They’re not Republicans. That, and the US electoral system, makes them the only party that in most of the US has a realistic chance of defeating Republicans. It’s the defeat of Republicans that matters, though, not the election of Democrats. But that, of course, is another topic altogether.