. . UNITED STATES: POLITICS: POLITICAL PARTIES: REPUBLICAN PARTY: Adrift in Iowa: Tired Rituals in Tough Times . . Adrift in Iowa: Tired Rituals in Tough Times By FRANK BRUNI Published: August 13, 2011 New York Times Sunday Reviewhttp://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/14/opinion/sunday/ Bruni-adrift-in-iowa-tired-rituals-in-tough-times.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1
. A shorter URL for the above link: . http://tinyurl.com/3exfo2j . .I didnt make it to Rick Santorums appearance the previous day at a Hy-Vee grocery store in Iowa Falls, but I wish I had, because it was there that he equated gay marriage with both incest and a square, moderately absorbent crumb remover.
. Ill explain. .Santorum was saying that when you speak of two men or two women as married, you indulge in a fiction. An impossibility. This is a napkin, he announced in an angry voice, abruptly ripping one from a dispenser and holding it high. I can call this napkin a paper towel. But it is a napkin. Why? Because it is what it is.
.So while someone might assert that marriage could be between fathers and daughters, he added, It doesnt make it marriage. Agreed. It makes it a crime, and to mention that in the same breath as same-sex couples is nothing short of appalling.
.Santorum was competing for the same evangelical voters who seem to have taken such a shine to Bachmann. On Sunday she visited two Iowa churches, the second one in the town of Waukee, where the pastor, Jeff Mullen, told congregants, we inherently know that homosexual behavior is immoral and unnatural.
.God shows his anger from heaven against all sinful, wicked people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness, Mullen said, reading from the book of Romans, according to news reports. His sermon was supplemented by a video in which a man testified to having converted from homosexuality to heterosexuality with Gods help. No more gay. All prayed away.
. snip .Bachmanns debate performance was troubling. In her opening remarks, she caromed from senseless to ear-splitting, first saying that her vote against raising the debt ceiling had proved correct and then veritably yelping that Obama would be a one-term president.
.But that wasnt the scary part. The scary part was how little distance there was, really, between her and the others on the stage.
. snip .Among the eight candidates, not one brooked the possibility of any tax increases to help solve the debt problem, even though John Boehner, a fiscal conservative, seemed to have a mind partly open to that at the start of the debt-ceiling negotiations.
.HOW can that be? Its because all of the Republican Party is running scared of its super-conservative faction in Congress and because the Republican nominating process rewards a rightward tilt. That remains true this election cycle, to the partys and the countrys detriment.
. snip . Is that where Romney, the current front-runner, would end up? .In Iowa he talked repeatedly about his 25 years in the private sector, and at one point stressed that he spent only four years his one term as Massachusetts governor in elective office. Its clear already that the issue of experience will play out in a fascinating way in 2012, with Obamas critics faulting him for too little preparation but trying not to seem like veteran politicians themselves, lest they run afoul of an anti-incumbent mood. Romney walks that fine line by focusing on his career in business.
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