Iowa Corn Cakes
by digby
Chuck Todd just said that if Michele Bachman looks like she might get the nomination, the business will actively try to stop her because of her views on the debt ceiling. If that's the straw that breaks the camel's back, they should be mounting a campaign against a whole bunch of Tea Partiers. They nearly got it done.
Indeed, the fact that sane businessmen and wealthy elites aren't gathering their forces against this whole field of GOP loonies (so looney that Newt Gingrich appears moderate by comparison)tells you just how far politics has gone off the rails.
Even right wing expert Adele Stan was taken aback by how crazy they've become:
If there was any doubt that the Republican Party is now firmly in the hands of far-right ideologues, last night's broadcast surely dispelled that notion. In fact, many of the themes sounded throughout the evening appeared to come right out of the platform of the Constitution Party, the hard-core, theocratic party founded by Christian Reconstructionist Howard Phillips.
Candidates discussed the right of fetuses conceived in rape to be born, a return to the gold standard as the basis for U.S. currency, and the proposed abolition of the Federal Reserve, all tenets of the Constitution Party platform. Rounding out the Reconstructionist agenda was a question to Bachmann about her adherence to the doctrine of "wifely submission," advocated by several right-wing Christian sects, which she dodged by saying that the term simply meant mutual respect between husband and wife. (AlterNet's reporting on the influence of Christian Reconstructionism on Bachmann's beliefs can be found here, here and here.)
Read on for a full rundown of the debate.
I think what struck me the most was how they've seamlessly incorporated their extreme social conservatism --- even to the point where presidential candidates are now boldly saying that a woman should be forced to bear her rapists child because "it isn't the fetuses fault" that it was conceived in hideous violence.(The irrelevant gestation vessel apparently must bear her share of the blame however, and accept her just punishment...)This has been commonplace in GOP circles for some time. Warmongering as well, although it was only really discussed with respect to Iran top give the candidates an excuse to show their fealty to US ally Israel. The big change is the full embrace of crackpot wingnut economics, the likes of which you used to only see at those seminars about how to become a sovereign citizens to avoid taxes. These people have officially become economic saboteurs on a level I don't think we've ever seen before. It's one thing to be against TARP, it's quite another for presidential candidates to be espousing throwback Christian Reconstructionism in a time of economic crisis.
Read the Christian Reconstructionist Constitution Party Platform --- you'll find it's very familiar. With the exception of its position on ending wars --- which, for different reasons, neither Party will ever embrace --- it is now the defacto GOP platform as well.
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