Surrendering To The Extremes: Meet Some of 2012's Scariest Candidates

[flamingdem]

http://www.nationalmemo.com/surrendering-to-the-extremes-meet-some-of-2012s-scariest-candidates/4/

When Todd Akin, Republican nominee for the US Senate in Missouri, picked the wrong words to describe what has become mainstream pro-life doctrine, he ignited a firestorm. The Republican Party is still smarting from the 2010 losses of Christine O’Donnell, Sharron Angle and Ken Buck, which cost them the Senate. So the GOP machine turned on Akin with such sharpness and certainty, you’d almost think he’d suggested Mitt Romney pay a normal tax rate.

But Akin isn’t some fringe figure. He is the GOP mainstream. He wasn’t even the Tea Party candidate in the primary — that was Sarah Steelman, endorsed by Sarah Palin herself. What Akin is running on — taking health insurance from at least 30 million Americans, gutting government, and lowering taxes for the richest — is pretty much what every Republican in the country is running on. On Tuesday, the GOP officially approved Akin’s “offensive” views on women’s health in the form of the “human life amendment,” making them central to the party’s 2012 platform.

The scariest thing about the GOP is how the fringe has taken over the party. But here are four candidates who personify just how extreme the Republican Party has become.

example #1:
Ted Cruz, Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate from Texas, is an Ivy League-educated lawyer. So how do you make a member of the “elite” palatable to the Tea Partiers? As Sarah Palin told a rally of Cruz supporters, “Ted is not going to D.C. to make nice with the frou-frou, chichi cocktail crowd.” Cruz rejects academic thought on the stump; instead he focuses on imaginary conspiracies that involve the World Bank and the UN. When he won his primary, George F. Will nearly had a George F. Willgasm, praising it as a victory for the “Madisonian.” Will neglected the fact that James Madison was the man who led the effort to pass the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, written by Thomas Jefferson. Ted Cruz on the other hand authored the Supreme Court brief that preserved the words “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance. Reconciling the fundamentalism of tea partiers like Cruz with the Founders is nearly impossible, which is why David Barton, a historian who specializes in that speciousness, just had his book on Jefferson pulled from the shelf.

[Bluenorthwest]

1. Is this linkless for a reason?

Where are the other examples?

[maddezmom]

2. here is the link

http://www.nationalmemo.com/surrendering-to-the-extremes-meet-some-of-2012s-scariest-candidates/

[flamingdem]

4. Thanks!

sleepy today

[flamingdem]

3. sorry 'bout that

coffee is still kicking in.. I just posted the link

[Bluenorthwest]

7. I just can't wait to see the other three! Thank you for posting this!

nt

[flamingdem]

5. Ryan makes the list - glad to see him included - esp. since he could in theory be POTUS

What makes the congressman from Wisconsin’s First District and soon-to-be GOP nominee for vice president so scary is how presentable and benign he seems to be. He’s expert in using appearances to cloak his intentions. Ryan has presented a plan to cut the deficit that grows the deficit. A plan to “save” Medicare that will end Medicare as we know it. And huge cuts to the federal government that will cut almost every domestic program out of existence by 2050 while growing the military exponentially. Before Ryan’s Budget, these ideas would have been laughed out of the Capitol. But at a time when we need government the most and government can borrow money at almost no cost, he’s paired austerity with trickle-down economics. This is a pairing that could turn this jobs crisis into a depression in just months, should Ryan ever have the chance to actually implement it. And with Grover Norquist imagining Paul Ryan as economic “Cheney,” that disaster could be only one election away.

[broiles]

6. There is an alternative for Texans.

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