O-mama - Opinionated Moms

Thank you!!! Jon Huntsman is absolutely the only grown up running for the GOP nomination. The rest of the field is shameful, including Mitt Romney who waffles and panders like no other. I worry for our country, if the GOP nominates someone like Rick Perry or Michele Bauchman who is so far out of the mainstream of America.

So frightening to me as a life long Republican! But, Jon Huntsman came out on the side of sanity. Perplexing to me that he isn't getting more traction.

The problem for a moderate Republican like Huntsman is that the nominating process, at least for now, is in the hands of the Tea Party wing of the party. They refuse to support anyone who objects to any of their positions and for now they are calling the shots.

But why? Where have all the rational Republicans gone??? I have to believe that there are more educated, reasonable Republicans out there. Anyone? Anyone? It is just astonishing to me that someone who says outrageous things gets all the attention, but someone who says pragmatic things is ho hum and not worthy of media attention. Ridiculous.

I don’t know if it is a comment on our educational system or what. I am almost 70 years old and over the last 25 or 30 years, I have seen the entire country move extremely far to the right. Republicans from the 1950’s and ‘60’s like Eisenhower, Rockefeller, Charles Percy or Everett Dirksen would have no chance of getting elected on the Republican ticket today and would probably be too liberal for today’s Democrats.

In thinking further about the influence of anti-science, fundamentalist Christian philosophy on the Republican Party, I think it really got its start with Richard Nixon’s Southern Strategy in the late '60's and early '70's of breaking the Democratic control of the “Solid South”. The opening was created by LBJ in getting the voting rights act of 1965 passed. Johnson knew what would happen when he signed the bill, saying “we have lost the South for a generation”. Nixon strategy worked very well and didn’t require a lot of effort. He had regular meetings in the Oval Office with right wing religious leaders like Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell and made a couple of Supreme Court nominations who had a back ground of fighting for segregation. They were defeated in the democratically controlled Senate, but I suspect Nixon knew they would. No Republican has done anything to upset Southern white voters since and the bottom line is that the South has been dominated, at least on the national level, by Republicans ever since. I am sure the Republicans out side of the South never thought the party would wind up with what they have now. The Tea Partier’s anti-government positions, which mesh well with the Southern Christian fundamentalism, are setting the agenda to get a Republican nomination. I suspect they will continue to until someone realizes they need the indpendent vote

And the same guy who is gutting education...the Texas swagger is NOT what our country needs...we already know what he stands for SPECIAL INTEREST money, taking care of the good ole boys that support him, JESUS can solve all, climate change is a hoax, science is a hoax, cut taxes and use more oil - Texas gold! Yikes. Been there, done that. It didn't work out so well?!#!@!?

And now he says "I think you want a president who is passionate about America -- that’s in love with America.” I am not sure how that squares with thinking about succeeding as well.