September 15, 2011 6:17 AM

The modern-day equivalent of the Know-Nothing Party

(Also published at The Agonist)

‎When you make comments that fly in the face of what 98 out of 100 climate scientists have said, when you call to question evolution, all I’m saying is that in order for the Republican Party to win, we can’t run from science.

  • Jon Huntsman

Jon Huntsman is fluent in Chinese. In a short period of time the Republicans have come quite a long way. The last Republican president wasn’t even fluent in English.

  • David Letterman

If you’re a moderate Republican these days (and you’re a dying breed, to be sure), you have to be alarmed that Jon Huntsman is the voice of reason within the GOP. At a time when the party’s 2012 Presidential candidates are pandering furiously to the science-ignoring, faith-based, and ignorance-propelled Far Right base, the GOP looks like something straight out of A Confederacy of Dunces, or- my favorite- Idiocracy. I can almost understand the party’s collective denial of global climate change, although even that flies in the face of currently available scientific knowledge. Their insistence that deficit reduction is Job One ignores the reality that the biggest problem facing this country is that people don’t have actual jobs. And the GOP’s tendency to view the world in black-and-white terms too often leads to simplistic proposals designed to solve complex problems.

Remember Perry’s Texas A&M transcripts are on the Internet. He got an AVERAGE D in science classes and C in history.

No amount of coercion or medication would have convinced me to watch last week’s GOP debate at the Reagan Library or this week’s Tea Party/CNN debate in Tampa, FL (And how is it that CNN is in bed with the Tea Party?). What I’ve seen appears to be little more than comic fodder for the likes of Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. It would be nice to think that the Republican field is filled with intelligent, serious, thoughtful souls who understand that America faces some serious problems and it’s time to roll up our sleeves and work together to find serious solutions. Instead what we have is a collection of uber-Jesus-y demagogues who couldn’t have an independent thought if Jon Stewart held a gun to their heads. I could snarkily break the field down, but as much fun as that might seem at the moment, it gets us no closer to the SERIOUS work that needs to be done.

Honestly, you could have forced the GOP candidates to take the stage wearing clown suits, and the results of the debates probably wouldn’t have been much different. Those of us who’ve been hoping for a serious and substantive debate about the issues facing America today are going to be sorely disappointed, because what we’re much more likely to get is the moral equivalent of a melee from The Jerry Springer Show.

And you wonder why I fear for the future of our country….

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This page contains a single entry by Jack Cluth published on September 15, 2011 6:17 AM.

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