sport the war/war support

You know, the one Good Thing I could see (realistically) emerging from the 2008 presidential election was the possibility of the ideological center of the Republican party moving away from the religious right (which is to say, not necessarily towards anything particularly good, just not THAT). Specifically, that the GOP would nominate Rudy Giuliani and the Dobsonites would be seriously pissed off about it and openly marginalized to boot.

Then Pat Robertson has to go and spoil my fun. Say what you will about the Theocons, they know enough realpolitik to stay relevant, even in a year when there really is no reason for them to be.

For all the evil done to the republic in the last seven years by GWB and company, I cannot bring myself to get on board with Team Blue. I'm not a Democrat, I never have been, and I don't think that I ever will be. I can recall only two times in my voting life that I have actually voted for a Democrat in a general election...once for Janet Napolitano when she was up for re-election in AZ (she's done a hell of a job there--and me voting for an incumbent is nearly as rare as me voting for a Democrat), and I held my nose and voted for Kerry in 2004, convincing myself that it was a close race in AZ (it wasn't) and that I was voting to fire GWB.

Usually I have voted LP or abstained. But I have cast a few ballots for various Republicans over the years (more than Democrats, anyway) and in a few cases been fairly happy to do so.

But what really bothers me here is the nagging problem I have with today's GOP--and the embrace of the thrice-married, abortion-tolerant and gay-roommate-having Giuliani by Pat Freaking Robertson illustrates it better than any other single event could. The only issue holding together the coalition of Neocons, Theocons, and Paleocons (are there any Paleocons left in the GOP?) is a blind, fevered, devotion to the war.

That, and opposition to Hillary Clinton being president of the United States. Which is especially odd, since she is easily the most hawkish Democrat in the field.

How the hell did we get here? Did 19 boxcutter-wielding sociopaths really scare us so badly that we are only capable of electing leaders that will perpetuate a permanent state of war?

(Title source below. Play it with the volume up...way up.)