I'm Not The Only One

Here's commentary from P.M. Carpenter, who holds a PhD in American history:

A moral abomination

There no longer exists any doubt that Mitt Romney intends to win the White House by conducting the most dishonest, unscrupulous and reprehensible campaign ever devised, in mere whimsy. The unethical stench of this man is not only breathtaking, it's meteoric. I have never seen anything like it, never heard anything like it, never imagined anything like it.

All you American political history books, move over; there's a new king of demagoguery in town, and future history will never see his malevolent depths of dishonor again.

What triggered this outburst? Today in St. Louis, just today, in just this one day, mind you, this despicable wretch of a man called President Obama's economic policies a "moral failure of tragic proportions"...

[...]

It's only June, and Mitt Romney has already exhausted all the hideous possibilities of a Dorian Gray mentality that would make even Oscar Wilde blush. Moral. That's this pathetic, vile little pol's new favorite word. Moral. Here's a man who leads a party that endorses torture as well as unprovoked war, and coddles the rich while showing indifference to the poor. Moral.

Combine Gray with Elmer Gantry and you'd still come up short of the "moral" abomination that calls itself Mitt Romney.

There's more, also echoing my thoughts on the extremism of the current R party. Here's an article with the following title:

My break with the extreme right

I worked for Reagan and wrote for National Review. But the new hysterical right cares nothing for truth or dignity

It includes such commentary as:

I ... founded a conservative college newspaper, held positions in the Reagan administration and at several conservative think tanks, and published five books that conservatives applauded. I’ve written for umpteen major conservative publications – National Review, the Weekly Standard, the Wall Street Journal and Forbes, among them. But no longer. That was the old right. The last thing hysteria promoters want is calm, reasoned argument backed by facts. And I’m horrified that these people have co-opted the name “conservative” to scream their messages of hate and anger.

To repeat: our country is increasingly in the grip of a political party gone nuts, one wholly uninterested in facts, in democracy, in working for the common good. And its latest leader is a liar of proportions hitherto unseen in American politics. It's not just me saying it: it's the vestigial remains of a tradition of thought and compromise that once characterized Republicans, and still, evidently, characterizes true conservatives, of which virtually none remain in the R hierarchy. This rank dishonesty and placing of party power above public good, this abandonment of facts and deliberate rejection of expertise, is as obvious as a barberous attack on a gay kid.

And yet...

And yet, the average Republican voter seems quite okay with this sorry state of affairs, only too willing to believe the lies of Romney and his screamers, all too easily deceived, gratefully uninformed. Happy to recline into their particular perversion of faith as a substitute for the hard work of thinking, and into prejudices as justification for it all.

God help us.