harikari.com

I set out on a mission last night to find a single republican candidate for president who didn’t believe that the government would be better at deciding how I parent my children, confer with my doctor, or pray to my god than I would be at making those decisions myself.

Among the field were the 11 candidates who have actually announced an intention to and have filed the proper paperwork for running a presidential campaign. Only one of them managed to fight his way through my thugish criteria: Ron Paul. But let’s meet the other ten first.

1. John Cox: Same old bullshit. No abortion, no exception, and no gay marriage. This kind of uncreative, stay the course, copy the last successful guy thinking is EXACTLY WHAT WE DON’T NEED in our next president, idiot. We’re going to have to hold you back in the 20th-century Grade.

2. Tom Tancredo: Argument: “Traditional marriage is the only way to have kids. Except adoption, extra-marital sex, in-vitro fertilization, and any of a number of promising scientific techniques that will doubtless give hope to childless families worldwide. Except gays.” I don’t know the correct internet terminology for this kind of argument, but let me guarantee you: Kids are not the reason most of us were thinking of as we traversed the emotional minefield of the dating scene with its crazy, doe eyed, unicorn-themed wedding planned out since she was six, something blue already waiting in a special box that she got at a special moment from that special 12th grade literature teacher with the words “So he waited, listening for a moment longer to the tuning fork that had been struck upon a star. Then he kissed her,” imprinted upon its lid, and a little set of booties, one blue and one pink, that she lovingly keeps in her sock drawer where she put them years ago and said “One day, I’ll love you no matter what you are,” types who are just waiting for a chance to put that baren wasteland of a womb she’s been burdened with to god’s intended purpose…

This isn’t proving my point. There are LOTS of weirdoes out there simply waiting to get married and spawn. But should we be basing our system of government on the candidate that spends so much time pandering to them?

Plus I simply can’t wait for the day when the cretins argue “This candidate is for traditional family values. Remember when married gays and lesbians adopted and infertile couples used test tubes? Let’s go back to the golden age before protein splicing DNA transmogrification capsules gave birth to the unholy union of monstrous dog and cat hybrids with no anus!”

3. Tommy Thompson: School vouchers, abortion, and guns. Ok, let’s start with the guns. “Gov. Thompson … banned Wisconsin communities from passing anti-gun ordinances that are stricter than state law.” This would work as the little part in a dictionary definition for the word Hypocrite that uses a sentence, in italics, to illustrate its usage. Guns aren’t just a political issue. Some people actually do feel safer when guns are harder to get. If Elyite county wants to say, “Hey folks, we’ve got us a heck of a meth problem out here. Kids is shootin’ kids an’ it just ain’t right. We’re gonna raise the minimum age you can purchase a gun without a parent’s signature from 16 to 21 and even then you have to git someone to vouch for yer character. Just until Guvner Tommy ‘cides to pass a real law,” do we really need more government bureaucracy holding our good arm behind our backs while they come up with a solution that will keep the NRA bloc happy?

School vouchers! A no longer so veiled attempt at allowing the teaching of specific religious beliefs in schools by diverting funds from “failing” public schools. It’s a refund for the families who don’t want their kids in that cesspool of dirty ideas and science so they can send their kids to the schools OK’d by God! What about my refund? I don’t have any kids in school. Neither does my mom. Where’s her refund?

4. Let’s move on to Sam Brownback and begin with a quote: “We must clean up America’s culture, beginning in every home.” Now, by “We” I assume he means government. It constantly amazes me how republicans get away with this big government vs small government schtick. A government’s power must be pretty big if it can reach into every home and check out what’s going on. And then if they don’t approve they have to go out and put something in place that will “clean it up.” That’s pretty big to me.

Then he goes on about activist judges and how it’s the responsibility of the Senate to keep them off the bench. Well, hey, I have an idea: let’s take the ACTIVISM off the bench. Send more legislation that doesn’t require judicial intervention. Elect senators that will work toward giving our judges little to do with their legislation. But no, then they’d have no loose and meaningless bills on which to grandstand. Can’t have that.

5. Good old Rudy Giuliani. I remember thinking “I wish he was president” on 9/11. He stepped in and gave us pertinent information, didn’t say a word about turning the middle east into a glass parking lot, and waited a few days before taking a photo op on the rubble.

Since then it’s all been downhill. He rides the fence on abortion saying that, because it’s legal he has to support the law, but were it not legal his hands would no longer be tied and he’d be able to put the full force of his Christian values into governance. Fortunately, “Justices Scalia, Roberts, and Alito [are] principled individuals who can be trusted to respect the constitution as it is written rather than attempting to legislate from the bench.” I guess that means he’ll load the courts with judges just like them. Judges who’ll untie his hands by ignoring the principal of stare decisis in 40 year old cases like Roe v. Wade.

6. Duncan Hunter: Since I don’t think he’ll even make it past New Hampshire, I’m just going to post a few select quotes from his site. It’s actually worth looking at if you want a sort of wacko-from-the-right chuckle.

“I have introduced the Right to Life Act, [to] legally define “personhood” as the moment of conception [and] guarantee all constitutional rights and protections, including life, to the unborn, [bypassing the need for] a constitutional amendment.”

Does a fetus retain the right of Habeas Corpus?

“I would amend the U.S. Constitution and provide blanket protection to all unborn children from the moment of conception.”

Huh, blankets for the unborn. There’s a grand conception.

“I support [judicial appointees] with good judgment, proven values, a belief in God, and a heart for the least of us, including the unborn.”

Wait a minute…there’s something creepy here. Declaring a fetus a person, giving them a blanket, having “heart” for them. This is starting to sound like setting the stage for linking current legislation with the slippery slope toward marriage between aging politicians and the unborn. Opposite sex, of course.

7. Mike Huckabee seemed like a nice guy on The Daily Show. What I want to know is why all these guys think talking to Jon Stewart, with his legions of politically informed viewers with a diverse set of beliefs ranging from “abortions for some” to “little American flags for others,” yet sharing a common belief that government should stay out of our bedrooms, could come on the show and do more than bring their creepy obsessions with inserting government into situations that used to be handled by intimate couples, families, communities, congregations, and prayer to light.

I like you Mike, but stop patronizing and move government in the direction it’s meant to be going: toward the solutions for problems that face us all as a society and how we can work together, live together, and prepare for a future where this divisiveness can move back to the intimate couples, families, communities, congregations and prayers where they belong.

8. John McCain. I don’t even want to talk about this guy. Such a disappointment.

9. Jim Gilmore: Must have conferred with Tom Delay to decide that the Federal government was quick enough, wise enough, and individually caring enough to step in between a doctor, a patient, and a family to pass judgement as to who lives and who dies when it comes to emergency abortion procedures. He also decided that women who drive hundreds of miles to one of the few clinics in his state to get an abortion must also wait 24 hours beyond their initial consultation before they can get it done, effectively making abortion illegal for all but the richest and well supported citizens of Virginia.

10. And now for my favorite, Mitt Romney. “I think every child deserves to have a mother and a father.” Except those whose daddies die in a war he supports. Plus, he’s Mormon. I watched this thing the other day about Mormons and boy is some of their stuff weird (not to say it’s weirder than, say, the Catholics, but definitely less mainstream and understood - by far). I don’t think the republicans who believe that a candidate’s religious beliefs should be used to force the rest of the country to live a certain way and keep their genitals penetrating the proper, government ordained orifices, are going to like what this guy’s religion tells him the government should be telling you you should be doing in your bedroom. And it’s not really what you think…it’s weirder.

11. Ron Paul. Vote for Ron Paul if you have to vote republican. He doesn’t mention anywhere in his site that you need to not be gay. Nor does he tell you not to have an abortion. He doesn’t even talk about god. I mean, I didn’t research his other beliefs, but if he’s not going to pander to the deep pockets of the religious right the way EVERY other candidate so far has, and if he’s not going to set up surveillance cams in my underwear, and he’s going to rely on his non-wedge-issue views to get him elected, he’s already top of the field in my book.

And now, here’s this:

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