Seriously, can they get any scummier?

Ok, let's say you're a Republican politician. Your side is trailing in every poll in which the public is asked which party they would like to see run Congress. Your President is now widely seen as an albatross, an empty suit, a dimwitted disaster who started a deadly and unprovoked war, headed a hugely incompetent response to Hurricane Katrina, spent his way (like the drunken coke fiend he once was) through a federal budget that went from the enormous surplus he inherited from Clinton to a huge deficit, in just six years. And, for good measure, your party is seen as a corrupt tool of big business, intent on gutting the nation's environmental laws, weakening worker safety regulations, and instituting budget-busting tax giveaways to the super rich.

So, what do you run on in the November elections?

Turning around the economy? Rethinking Iraq? Redoubling efforts to capture bin Laden? Instituting a sea change to improve the lot of the average American in health care, tax and job security issues?

Nah.

It's time to go to the wedge issues that divide Americans, fire up the base, get the red states aroused, please the Christian right, and, of course, do not a fucking thing to help the country.

For the 2006 elections, according to Fred Barnes, the well-placed conservative reporter: “House Republicans, for their part, intend to seek votes on measures such as the Bush-backed constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, a bill allowing more public expression of religion, another requiring parental consent for women under 18 to get an abortion, legislation to bar all federal courts except the Supreme Court from ruling on the constitutionality of the Pledge of Allegiance, a bill to outlaw human cloning, and another that would require doctors to consider fetal pain before performing an abortion.”

Ahh - flag burning, gays, religion, abortion, the Pledge of Allegiance, and cloning.

Just the ticket to cure the nation's problems.

Unfuckingbelievable.

And the sad thing is, this type of crap usually gets enough of the right wing nuts out there to loyally troop to the polls and vote for the scare-mongering politicians.

There's an old saying – the people get the government they deserve. Now, I certainly understand why multimillionaires vote for the GOP, which merrily lowers their tax rates and makes it easier for them to run their businesses.

I don't understand the dumb shitheads in the middle class (and even lower middle class) who vote for Bush, DeLay, et al, even though it's their jobs that are being shipped overseas, their health care plans and pensions that are being eliminated, and their environment and food safety which is being jeopardized by the weakening of the regulations governing them.

I can't comprehend why they listen to this cultural wedge issue crap time after time.

They ignore the damage being done to the country by Bush and his band of cronies so they can feel righteous about making sure homos can't marry. They are getting the government they deserve. They deserve the shitstorm coming their way.

Oh, I know some would say, "What an elitist. No wonder you Democrats can't win, when you denigrate proud, God-fearing Americans in red state Bush land."

Well, fuck that. Because, unfortunately, the rest of us get stuck with that government too. And we don't deserve it.