When are sensible Republicans, if there are any left, going to stand up to their Tea Party hijackers?

It’s not a hijack. It’s an alliance with perverse incentives.

The big money backers of the GOP want to expand their vulture capitalism, i.e. the running wreckdown and stripping of capital out of the old, failing, Middle American agrarian/industrial economic order.

The teapartiers and such are people who have tacitly given up on preserving that society and order (and frankly, virtuous white Christian Middle America as a concept) though they like it a lot and insist on maximal individual psychological satisfaction in return for getting burned over economically.

Not that most of either side really understands the bargain they have made. Though their leaders very likely do. The village both sides profess to love is being set on fire in order to save it.

http://freethought.mbdojo.com/foundingfathers.html#Jefferson

Make of them what you will.

1) He seems to be desperate. With the “Kenya, oops, I mean Indonesia” birtherism, and the snuggling up with anti-gay hate groups that didn’t just make SPLC’s list last year (the American Family Association, the Bryan Fischer group that runs the Rediscover God in American Conference), he’s acting like he’s already running behind.

2) Huckabee presents himself as a small town, deeply evangelical nice guy — which is a sharp contrast with the rabid dog posturing of so many GOP conservatives today. He talks about genuinely helping families, perhaps even with some government aid, caring stewardship of the environment and not giving up on public schools since most people will continue to send their kid to them. And his nice guy tone continues when he talks about us. However, like in those other areas, his issue advocacy falls short of his presumed decency. And that seems especially true when he talks about us. I’ve looked at what he’s said about us, and it is as bad as or worse then most LGBT commentators say it is. I think he’s vulnerable in regard to the hypocrisy of his nice guy posing and the mean-spirited things he actually says about us.

Where did the enlightenment go? What became of teh intellectually sustainable founding principles of an educated class seeking responsibility for running a civilised country on the European model, a country Paine was proud of?