The caption of this post is basically a question Howard Kurtz asks in a column in The Daily Beast and candidly, the answer is likely a resounding "No." Even the every bizarre Michele Bachmann and cowboy Rick Perry fail to satisfy all of the neanderthal and/or highly bigoted requirements of the Tea Party Kool-Aid drinkers. By relentlessly pandering to the worse elements of the GOP base the Party leadership has indeed created a Frankenstein monster. Like many of Obama's current political problems, the GOP quagmire is self created. There was a time when the extremists in the GOP would have been tucked away in the attic like a crazy relative. Not so in today's GOP where the Christianists and Tea Party seem to hold full sway and no one has the courage to declare that these people are toxic - not to mention likely insane. Here are highlights from Kurtz's column:
If you assembled a Republican primary candidate in a laboratory, it would be hard to build a more breathtakingly conservative specimen than Rick Perry. Social Security is unconstitutional? Check. Evolution is suspect? Check. Being gay is a choice, like being an alcoholic? Check.
But wait—bzzt! There’s one malfunction here. Perry opposes illegal immigration, to be sure, but believes the children of such immigrants—often brought here at a young age—ought to get in-state tuition breaks so they can go to college and not be a burden on society. And with that, he has flunked the Purity Test.
It is a test being imposed on everyone who wants the GOP nomination, and it has never been more stringent or located farther to the right—a sign of the stranglehold the Tea Party has on the process. . . . . George W. Bush and John McCain would be laughed off the stage these days for the positions they took on immigration.
No one in the GOP wants to hear about “compassionate conservatism,” not when debate audiences are booing a gay soldier and cheering the death of a hypothetical emergency-room patient without insurance. Obamacare is so thoroughly loathed that nobody bothers to ask these candidates what they would do about the 50 million uninsured Americans if it were repealed—including young people under 26 who are now covered by their parents’ policies.
Romney has the longest list of offenses, of course, having once been in favor of abortion rights, gay rights, and an activist approach to health care, as evidenced by the Massachusetts plan he now labors to distinguish from Obamacare. That was then, this is now.
The Purity Test is so unyielding that we have the amazing sight of all the candidates raising their hands to affirm that they wouldn’t accept a dollar in tax increases even in exchange for 10 dollars of spending cuts—no matter how good a deal that might seem to a fiscally conservative lawmaker not running for president. Michele Bachmann went a step further in last week’s Fox News debate, saying taxpayers should be able to keep every dollar they earn.
At the moment the conservative media establishment has soured on Perry, with Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol calling Perry’s Fox debate performance “almost disqualifying.” Kristol, like many other Republicans, yearns for Chris Christie . . .
But if Christie actually jumped into the race—that is, if he could explain why he spent so many months insisting he’s not “ready” to be president—he, too, would fail the Purity Test. He believes, for instance, that “climate change is real” and “human activity plays a role in these changes.” And when critics savaged him for nominating as a judge a Muslim who defended suspects after the 9/11 attacks—they were later cleared—Christie said he was “tired of dealing with the crazies” and that “this Sharia law business is crap.”
For a Republican to take a stance that breaks with party orthodoxy—whether toward illegal immigrants, uninsured patients, or Muslims—could attract swing voters in a general election. But first the candidate has to win the nomination, and in that arena, being impure remains a cardinal offense.
Can a sane candidate emerge from the morass? Only time will tell. Meanwhile I suspect Obama hopes the insanity in the GOP continues unabated. It may be the only thing that gets he possibly re-elected.
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