GOP Carved Like Sunday Roast

Richard Dawkins carves up Rick Perry and his ilk like a Sunday roast. In Attention Governor Perry: Evolution is a fact, Dawkins adeptly peels back the under-cooked meat of the Republican party with this razor-sharp indictment:

Ignorance and lack of education are positive qualifications, bordering on obligatory. Intellect, knowledge and linguistic mastery are mistrusted by Republican voters, who, when choosing a president, would apparently prefer someone like themselves over someone actually qualified for the job.

Personal Historic Perspective

The first Republican President of my political consciousness in the 1970s was Richard Nixon. By all accounts this President was sinister and corrupt. I still have a mint condition Impeach Nixon bumper sticker inter-leafed in my high school yearbook.

But Nixon, deceitful political animal that he was, wasn't an intellectual featherweight like today's unseemly brand of Republican hucksters (e.g., Palin, Perry, Bachmann). Nixon graduated from Duke Law, served in the House and the Senate, served as Vice President under Dwight Eisenhower -- all prior to a semi-successful presidency.

May the gods of reason and progress taze me with thunderbolts, but Republicans used to be capable of a modicum of people-friendly policies.

How how far right has the Republican party drifted since Tricky Dickey? Nixon did two things that would make him un-electable in a 2012 Republican primary:

1. He enforced desegregation of Southern schools and 
2. He established the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

Civil rights and environmental protection are a two-headed demon to today's Republican lap dog. Richard Nixon would have to be a Democrat to have a shot at the 2012 Presidency.