I was watching Rachel Maddow last night and she was making what I thought was an interesting point about how, assuming tea party guy Joe Miller holds on to victory in Alaska, the Republican Party will now be putting forward four-count-em-four nominees for the Senate who oppose abortion rights even in the cases of rape and incest.
That would be Miller, Sharron Angle in Nevada, Rand Paul in Kentucky and Ken Buck in Colorado. It looks to me like Miller, if he survives the absentee ballot count, will become a senator. Ken Buck leads appointed incumbent Democrat Michael Bennet by around eight or nine points right now. Paul seems like he'll probably beat Jack Conway, although that one is close. My guess is that Harry Reid will eke out a win over Angle, although that one is close too.
So you will have maybe three, maybe even four senators next January who believe a 14-year-old girl raped by her stepfather should have to give birth. Or use less lurid examples if you want. You get the picture.
I started thinking, that does seem rather extreme, and maybe the Democrats can use that somehow.
Then this morning I remembered: what am I thinking? That's not extreme. "No exceptions" is the official policy of the Republican Party!
Remember? Remember the hoo-ha in 2008 around the speculation about whether John McCain would stick to his vintage 2000 pledge to make the GOP (now that he was the nominee and could force such consideration if he wanted to) add exceptions for the cases of rape, incest or the mother's life? That's right: there are no exceptions in the GOP platform, not even for the life of the mother. There's a little gooey language in some preamble about respecting divergent views, but the position is the position. McCain backed off because he was loudly warned that any attempt to change the language would be suicide.
I'm not sure this fearsome foursome even goes that far. Paul, I think, has grudgingly mumbled that he would permit an abortion to save a mother's life (also Sarah Palin's position). But they're hardly extremists, based on the GOP platform. Indeed maybe they're the only real Republicans out there.
Makes you think a little. The tea party is not some aberration of GOP norms. It's just the GOP id unrestrained. "Mainstream" conservatives want to get rid of Social Security and replace the income tax with a sales tax or what have you. They just know better than to say it straight out. The tea partiers say it straight out. That's the only difference.
