Monday, August 20, 2012

Quote of the Day: Andrew Sullivan on "Republican Islamists"

This blog looked at the batshitery of Missouri Republican Senate candidate Rep. Todd Akin (pictured at left) yesterday.  For those who missed that post, Akin claims that "legitimate rape" doesn't lead to pregnancies.  It's part of his defense of his position seeking to outlaw abortion in all instances.   Andrew Sullivan calls it like it is:

[W]hat's striking to me is the enduring reality that alleged fiscal conservatives in today's GOP almost uniformly have social views that one normally associates with soft-Islamists. It should be possible to be a total fiscal tightwad and still adopt a live-and-let-live philosophy in government - and yet that is emphatically not the GOP we have today. Akin is a classic Islamist-Republican, seeing women entirely as temptations for men who somehow have responsibility for their fate even when being raped. Women are entirely objects - their lives and crises simply requiring an air-brush to keep the whole neurotic ideology intact.

Andrew goes on to cite other Republican candidates who have held this insane notion.  He finishes by describing this behavior as follows:

That's simply the public tidying up that the fundamentalist psyche constantly requires to keep messy, human reality at bay. It's a function of a backwardness and cultural panic that cannot be entirely disguised by an open and affirming convention stage.
Frankly, I'd be embarrassed to call myself a Republican nowadays.  The party has become something truly ugly.

No comments: