I haven’t watched any of the GOP presidential debates, but the highlights are enough to reinforce my dimmest views of the party and its most vocal supporters. At last night’s debate, audience members cheered when the moderator ask Ron Paul whether a hypothetical young man without health insurance who has fallen seriously ill should be allowed to die. Paul supporters can be a boisterous and particularly knuckleheaded bunch, but I don’t think they were the only ones cheering. And at the previous debate, one of the biggest applause lines came when the moderator pointed out that Texas had executed a lot of people.
Has the combination of the recession and the disaster that was Bush’s presidency thrown conservative psyche into such turmoil that it can only respond positively to other people’s suffering? Has overwhelming nihilism replaced any cohesive ideology they might have once possessed? It may be typical for a pinko Minneapolis liberal like me to react with revulsion to these cries for blood, but I can’t imagine that they play any better with independents who might have tuned into the debates out of curiosity. Republican handlers might consider putting up big signs that blink “DON’T APPLAUD EVEN THOUGH YOU REALLY WANT TO, YOU HEARTLESS DICKS” when appropriate.
