Some Republicans Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (I)

(updated below)

Hey sports fans. It's me again. Back from a workload induced hiatus to provide you with another fascinating installment of my blog. As this will be the last of the Mohicans and thus the last chance for you to send me hate mail/comments, this will be my analysis of the republican field. Buckle up.

Let's start with the lowest hanging fruit for me to dissect: Michele Bachmann. She is a particularly fascinating presidential candidate to me, as I imagine she is to others but for different reasons. If it wasn't so widely reported that God directly gave her visions and commands I might have considered her merely the Sarah Palin tea party clone, but that would be too easy. She is much more dynamic that. She studied law at Oral Roberts University, and further at William and Mary for the same reasons anyone who has a degree from ORU, and a masters in tax law do: God told her. I haven't mentioned this heavenly communication twice in order to critique her as much reenforce, as she does, her evangelical heft. It goes without saying that global climate change, evolution, and the age of the earth have no bearing on her world view. That isn't so much a scary prospect to me as these series of comments regarding the HPV vaccine.

Statements like this take immunology back centuries. The conspiracies and the rampant ignorance regarding vaccines in general are disturbing to health care professionals. Claims like this have the effect of spreading through the uneducated circles of fear. By the end of that telephone game, Bachmann's "retarded story" is accepted as gospel and young women aren't fully protected from cervical cancer.

Next, let me pick on Rick Santorum (don't Google!). He is attempting to be the most social conservative of the the republican candidates. As such, you have the typical republican stance on evolution, climate change... you get it? I don't even have to mention that from now on do I? Rick adds particular flavor to his rhetoric when it comes to homosexuality. Take this for example.

"Marriage existed before government. This is a napkin. I can call this napkin a paper towel. But it is a napkin. Why? Because it is what it is. Right? You can call it whatever you want, but it doesn't change the character of what it is. From the metaphysical. So people come out and say marriage is something else. A marriage is the marriage of five people. Five, ten, twenty. Marriage can be between fathers and daughters..."

After you're done unpacking the ontological arguments Santorum laid out there get back to me. I have yet to figure it out. Beyond his incredible depth in the field of evolution, he is a strong proponent of intelligent design. Go ahead, read Conservapedia on what it is, because I cannot honestly explain it. I've sat through a guest lecture on it without laughing. I've read about it. I've tried to be nice. But it's not science. It's not legitimate in any meaning of the word legitimate. It is, by mine and many others' estimations, creationism. I've addressed this before in a previous post, but to combine intelligent design with his napkin analogy, the napkin must have been created for a purpose: to confuse the hell out of me.

I'm going to address Ron Paul very succinctly because I don't know if I'm putting dipping my toe into the Paulite pool of internet ire. He is a physician. He is Libertarian. Sometimes he's incredibly brilliant. He has the most consistent worldview of any of the candidates. In fact, listening to him he seems to be the only candidate on the stage who lives in the rest of our shared reality. He speaks on uncontrolled military interventionism and jingoism. He speaks on civil rights abuses. I'd be willing to overlook everything else that he professes if it wasn't for the rigid libertarian ideology. Can anyone name me a system of free and unregulated market systems anywhere on the planet or throughout history? Present day Somalia? I am half joking, but my main complaint is that staunch Austrian school economics and unregulated banking systems gave us 19th century America. In which a civil war was fought over slavery (state rights) and the free markets crashed on a periodic basis.

Paul has been blackballed by the mainstream media, as so many critics have proclaimed. But when some of your staunchest allies are near lunatics, you have to wonder about the candidate. I will say that he is the most radically different candidate that the republicans have, and he would most likely cause the most severe effects on society. I'm not sure if it's change we could believe in though. (That didn't work out either)

Finally for this initial grouping of candidates I want to throw Huntsman in. Huntsman is the only one who has stood up for science. (Yes amongst the 2012 candidates that is something to mention.) He's currently polling very low, with a solid 1% of the vote. But the reality is that he is way too moderate. I'm not speaking personally, I'm assessing his chances of winning a republican primary in the age of this republican party. From every position that I've analyzed he holds some traditional conservative views, but not as rigidly or as dependably as some of his competitors. Although he is the most scientifically friendly of the candidates, with his level of polling, and his apparent policy moderation, he will win the primary when I win the lottery, and I don't play. Neither should you! Lotteries are a tax on statistics averse people, you don't have a chance and never will.

But I digress. I want to have more to say on Huntsman but the reality is that if he could run for president about 20 years ago, he might have a chance. Not this year, not next, and not for the foreseeable future. He does have other things going for him though!

Tune in later for my follow-up post on the flying circus act that is the republican presidential field. The clown car rolls on.

Update:

Huntsman may now be pandering for votes. You interpret this.

Notes:

I have not gotten any hate mail, or hate comments. I am prone to hyperbole at 1 in the morning.

Thanks to Rachel Maddow for the cartoon. I agree with her. He should use it as his campaign slogan!