Between applauding the death of uninsured Americans, booing gay soldiers and cheering mass executions in Texas, the Republican presidential primary race has been quite a shock to those who understood “conservatism” to mean “pro-life” and “pro-military.”
Apparently “compassionate conservatism” retired the same year as George W. Bush.
It’s moments like these that have highlighted not only the moral decay of the conservative constituency but also the depths to which Republican presidential primary candidates will dive in order to woo the teabagger demographic.
I’ve been generally opposed to the idea of a Democratic primary, mainly because challenging any incumbent has the potential effect of dividing the party. But in President Obama’s case, and given the daily headlines coming out of the GOP primary race, I’m softening to the idea.
Ralph Nader and Cornel West have been on a quest for weeks to find a few challengers to the Democratic presidential throne. Their idea, so far fruitless and no more plausible than Nader’s own presidential campaigns, was not brainstormed as a means to actually replacing Barack Obama. It was theorized as a way to get the president to pay better attention to the liberal agenda.
Though questions about their mental health have surfaced, Nader and West are not so delusional to think the Obama campaign behemoth will fall to one of the nameless, faceless, yet-to-be-revealed and so far unannounced Democratic primary challengers. They merely wanted to push progressive policy ideas into the mainstream, which, with all the dramatic, overhyped inarguably unnewsworthy circus acts on display in the Republican primary race, isn’t a terrible idea.
