The view from the other side of the big pond . . .

U.K. Independent journalist kinda/sorta agrees with krazee that the modern GOP is no longer the sane party of Eisenhower and Goldwater but instead has morphed into a quasi political/religious cult.

Here's an excerpt:

These increasingly frenzied claims have become so detached from reality that they often seem like black comedy. The right-wing magazine US Investors' Daily claimed that if Stephen Hawking had been British, he would have been allowed to die at birth by its "socialist" healthcare system. Hawking responded with a polite cough that he is British, and "I wouldn't be here without the NHS".

This tendency to simply deny inconvenient facts and invent a fantasy world isn't new; it's only becoming more heightened. It ran through the Bush years like a dash of bourbon in water. When it became clear that Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction, the US right simply claimed they had been shipped to Syria. When the scientific evidence for man-made global warming became unanswerable, they claimed – as one Republican congressman put it – that it was "the greatest hoax in human history", and that all the world's climatologists were "liars". The American media then presents itself as an umpire between "the rival sides", as if they both had evidence behind them.

It's a shame, because there are some areas in which a conservative philosophy – reminding us of the limits of grand human schemes, and advising caution – could be a useful corrective. But that's not what these so-called "conservatives" are providing: instead, they are pumping up a hysterical fantasy that serves as a thin skin covering some raw economic interests and base prejudices.

This is what happens when a political party allows insane religious zealots an equal seat at the dining room table. At first they are polite and genial guests, but what the emcee and his dinner mates do not realize is that once the banquet ends, their new dinner companion is off to his room to continue plotting the coup and takeover of their chummy gathering behind closed doors.

I was going to say that only time will tell whether or not this observation has any basis in fact -- but then I caught myself as a quick memory review of the past 10 years hit me over the head like a load of bricks -- it's already occurred -- and the coup de grace proof? Sarah Palin as Vice President. I rest my case.


----k