WWBD

I think it's pretty clear that if Jesus were to show up again, in Missouri or whatever, and planned to stay through an election cycle, he'd register as a Democrat. I mean, sure, you can scour the Bible and find a quote here or there to support pretty much any nasty position on any matter you like; but when it comes to what most people consider the essence of Jesus' message -- i.e., love, charity, concern for the less fortunate, peace, not placing the material over the spiritual, fairness -- today's Rs have become, speaking charitably, satanic.

That much is clear. And now, it seems, we have evidence that god is seeking to be sure today's version of a formerly respectable R party sinks below the horizon, sooner or later. He did, after all, convince the teabaggRs to reelect John Boehner, that sad excuse for a leader, as speaker yet again.

... interviews with nearly three dozen GOP lawmakers and senior aides revealed plenty of doubt. The majority is “adrift,” according to a longtime conservative. The top five leaders hail from blue states that voted for President Obama, making them out of step with a conference dominated by red-state Republicans. A junior Republican called it a “fractured” conference when it comes to the biggest issues. 

The leaders have come under intense scrutiny. Barely 36 hours after the caustic New Year’s Day vote, Boehner faced a coup attempt from a clutch of renegade conservatives. The cabal quickly fell apart when several Republicans, after a night of prayer, said God told them to spare the speaker. Still, Boehner came within a few votes of failing to secure his speakership on the initial vote, an outcome that would have forced a second ballot for the first time in nearly a century.

Somewhere along that storied spectrum that runs between laughable and appalling is the specter of people like Louis Gohmert, Michele Bachmann, Virgina Foxx, Dana Rohrabacher, and the rest of the bug-eyed, ill-informed, paranoid and lunacy-based thinkers of the Congressional right imagining god is whispering in their collective ear. Because if it's true, that god has a pretty warped sense of humor, and a mean, destructive streak of, well, biblical proportions. Like the late and much-lamented Froggy the Gremlin.

These are what passes for leaders in today's R party. Unsurprisingly, to college Republicans, the real leaders of the R party are seen to be that triumvirate of terribleness, Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, and Glenn Beck. And not in a good way. God, it would seem, doesn't just want to see to the end of teabaggerism; he wants them to drown in a sea of ignominy such that they'll be gone, unlamented, forever.

That poll, by the way, is about the only thing that sparks a little hope in me for the political future of this country. When young Republicans -- educated ones, anyway -- are rejecting the current regressivism and venality of their party, renewal isn't entirely out of the question.

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