The point is that poverty is a moral issue, and the Democrats have run away from it ever since the days of RFK, either abandoning it as a campaign issue of importance or else pursuing the weak tea of "not as crony capitalist as the GOP, but almost as much" approach of the "third way" crowd.

The Democrats need to speak with actual moral authority on issues like poverty, health care, infrastructure, the environment, education, and reveal how morally bankrupt the GOP is on those issues -- doing so will reveal that the GOP caucuses with Mammon, not with Jesus, on the issues of poverty and need, just as it caucuses with Caesar, and not with God, on issues of national security.

Not saying the Democrats need to get all theocratic -- I hope they don't go that way any further. But it's clear that poverty, pollution, education, health care, and so on can be argued and overcome along moral and aesthetic lines by a dedicated secular majority, particularly when these issues are ignored by a theocratic minority, who sneer at community organizing.

I'd love nothing more than for a daring Democrat to pipe up "Jesus was a community organizer" and throw it right back in the GOP's faces, their contempt for the weak, their worship of the powerful and the wealthy, and their turning their backs on the poor. It would lay bare the Big Lie of their theocratic movement, once and for all, and would peel away all but the most diehard flat-earthers who are part of the reactionary movement in this country.

Frankly, the GOP has lost the culture wars. Let's be clear on that -- they ran very hard on their agenda from about 1964 onward, with ever-increasing fervor, and while they won elections, they have found themselves ever more remote from what the majority of Americans want.

They remain a coherent and highly-disciplined political faction, but the real issues that matter most to the reactionary movement -- the foundations of their culture war -- those issues are lost to them, except as rhetorical devices meant to whip up their brimstone base into a frenzy.

Rather than ceding the "moral values" and "culture war" ground to the reactionaries, the Democrats can actually take the battle to them, if they had the courage to do so. Rather than, say, the Republican Christ-as-Capitalist (or Christ-as-Conqueror) warmonger/profiteer vision of Christianity, Democrats could strongly emphasize how caring for the poor and the weak is central to Christian values. Basically walking the talk in terms of care for the needy in our society -- this is a moral value entirely at odds with Republican actual practice.

The key for the Democrats is to draw out just how far from the mainstream the GOP are from the rest of the country.

So long as the GOP maintains a monopoly on their mythological morality, they'll keep the Democrats on the defensive.

It's funny to me how rabidly the Republican faithful embrace their mythologies in a candidate like Palin. She lies out of the starting gate, on the stump speech, on the campaign trail -- not just nuanced fables, but out-and-out lies and deceptions, and they love her for it.

I think the need to believe in something, anything -- even the same old Big Lie tarted up by the GOP with lipstick -- that drive is so strongly felt by them, that they'll follow this latest reactionary false prophet right off the cliff.

But the rest of us aren't obligated to do the same. We need an honest break from the 20th century, if we're going to face the 21st in some position other than prone. The United States cannot afford the luxury of its own ignorance any longer; not in a globally-competitive marketplace (sped along by neoconservative and neoliberal economics, incidentally). We need to look forward and move forward, not lurch backward.

There's not much hope for the reactionary rank-and-file; they'll clearly turn on their heels in a moment if it suits their ideological needs of the moment. But let's not go crazy -- what we need is progress, not pandemonium.

The first time I saw the Bush Doctrine referenced in the Chicago Tribune was on 7 March, 2002. It was a disturbing enough policy precedent that I clipped the article at the time. They used quotation marks for it in the headline, as the concept was novel enough at the time to warrant it. So, it's been around quite awhile -- I think Palin's bona fides as a Republican Kool-Aid chugger likely have more precedence than her actual understanding of foreign policy. After all, the nuances of policy and international law are meaningless to the GOP, when contrasted with the efficacy of holding power, right? That's what's underpinning the Bush Doctrine, anyway: might makes right.

Wow, Fey did an amazing impersonation. The vocal mannerisms, right on the money, and the look, perfect.

Given the GOP's strenuous (if cynical) arguments on behalf of the rights of the unborn, it's ironic that their borrow-and-spend philosophy goes on as forcefully as it does, as their economics forces American generations yet to come into abject debt slavery -- the rights of the unborn to not be debt-enslaved and impoverished tomorrow by Republican politics of today never gets addressed. It reveals everything about their priorities for this country -- if it wins elections for their party, it's GOOD, regardless of the harm it inflicts on the country as a whole, and for America's future.