Thanks to c u n d gulag for this video:

See also:

Some wingnuts think they found a “gotcha” regarding the Virginia Forcible Rape bill — a Virginia Planned Parenthood does ultrasounds prior to abortions. Of course, the wingnuts make no distinction between abdominal and transvaginal ultrasounds, revealing that they just plain don’t get it. They’re also a bit vague on the “consent” thing.

© Karen Roach | Dreamstime.com

As Jeffrey Bell, author of the new book The Case for Polarized Politics, notes in a Wall Street Journal interview, Santorum’s style of social conservatism is deeply American. No other Western country saw the rise of such a social-conservative movement after the social upheaval of the 1960s. Bell traces American social conservatism back ultimately to the God-given natural rights enunciated in the Declaration of Independence. Sure enough, Santorum is given to quoting the Declaration.

Why are Americans uniquely crazy? Maybe it’s something in the environment. The air, the air, is everywhere …

That won’t stop Santorum-haters from portraying him as threateningly un-American.

Has anybody been calling Frothy “un-American”? I can’t say that I’ve seen that. “Dangerously blinkered religious fanatic” is closer to it.

Patrick Buchanan explains the slippery slope America has been sliding down:

An early triumph of secularism came with the Scopes trial in 1923 in Dayton, Tenn. Clarence Darrow, defending a teacher who had violated state law by introducing Darwin’s theory of evolution into the classroom, mocked the Old Testament teachings of the Evangelical Christians, to the merriment of the establishment.

From that day on, Darwinism was taught in our schools, first as theory, then as fact, then as higher truth. With the Darwinian tenet — we evolved, we were not created — established truth in the public schools, secularism set about driving its enemy, Christianity, out completely.

Under the Warren Court in the 1950s and 1960s, it succeeded.

All Christian commandments, holidays, prayers, pageants and plays were gone. Where Woodrow Wilson, Harry Truman and Jimmy Carter had declared that America is a Christian nation, Obama has declared, “We do not consider ourselves a Christian nation,” but rather a nation of all faiths.

Shudder. Of course, this really goes back to The Virginia Act For Establishing Religious Freedom (1786), of which Thomas Jefferson said,

The bill for establishing religious freedom, the principles of which had, to a certain degree, been enacted before, I had drawn in all the latitude of reason and right. It still met with opposition; but, with some mutilations in the preamble, it was finally passed; and a singular proposition proved that its protection of opinion was meant to be universal. Where the preamble declares, that coercion is a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, an amendment was proposed, by inserting the word “Jesus Christ,” so that it should read, “a departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our religion;” the insertion was rejected by a great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mahometan, the Hindoo, and Infidel of every denomination.

The Santorum campaign is what happens when the old zombie ideas — cut taxes; deregulate — are so worn out even the candidates are bored with them.

Krugman:

Specifically, in early 2010 austerity economics — the insistence that governments should slash spending even in the face of high unemployment — became all the rage in European capitals. The doctrine asserted that the direct negative effects of spending cuts on employment would be offset by changes in “confidence,” that savage spending cuts would lead to a surge in consumer and business spending, while nations failing to make such cuts would see capital flight and soaring interest rates. If this sounds to you like something Herbert Hoover might have said, you’re right: It does and he did.

Now the results are in — and they’re exactly what three generations’ worth of economic analysis and all the lessons of history should have told you would happen. The confidence fairy has failed to show up: none of the countries slashing spending have seen the predicted private-sector surge. Instead, the depressing effects of fiscal austerity have been reinforced by falling private spending.

The libertarian crew at Reason magazine will be working overtime coming up with a reason why none of this is actually true.

The Michigan and Arizona primaries are on Feb. 28. Nate Silver has Mittens heavily favored in Arizona, but Frothy is way ahead in Michigan.

Mittens opposed the auto industry bailout, which turned out to be a great success. Steve Kornacki writes,

So as he campaigns in Michigan now, Romney is playing dumb, pretending that the auto industry’s comeback actually validates what he said in ’08 and that Obama — whose administration nudged GM and Chrysler into structured bankruptcy — was actually following the course that he prescribed. The only difference in their approaches, as Romney tells it, is that he would have forced the auto companies to rely on private financing to get through the bankruptcy process, and not the federal government.

Rich Yeselson adds, “this would almost sound sensible except for the fact that—hello!—there was a monster financial crisis in 2008 and 2009. The entire international credit system was frozen—there was no private capital interested and available for such a massive project.”

Meanwhile, Frothy is running around wailing that the Obama Administration’s agenda is not based on the Bible.

It appears the GOP is sticking to its “religious freedom” frame of the president’s contraception coverage policy. They don’t know when to fold. See also “2012: The year of ‘birth control moms‘?”

A common symptom of the social/psychological pathology called “movement conservatism” is the belief that most Americans agree with rightie ideas. Righties believe this even when most polls say otherwise.

So it doesn’t surprise me at all if Rush Limbaugh thinks doubling down on the culture war is a smart move for conservatives. And with the economy improving, what else do they have?

At least some righties are facing the fact that they won’t have an electable candidate in November. There is talk of changing the rules so that Jeb Bush could be anointed. But Rich Yeselson argues this can’t save them:

But, of course, under such a chaotic scenario, the white knight candidate would be destroyed by Obama in November. The current candidates and their supporters would be enraged, and the newly crowned candidate would obviously benefit from a rigged system designed—like Bush v. Gore—solely for his one time use. It would make the 1968 Democratic Convention in riot torn Chicago look like a chess tournament.

Recall that some Democrats imagined a similar possibility in 2008. Not a new candidate entering the race, but Hillary Clinton winning the nomination via various last minute rules changes, and the support of the majority of super delegates. Of course, however, the first African American major party presumptive nominee could not somehow be screwed out of the top spot at the last minute without tearing the party apart. A Pyrrhic victory, as it used to be during the original Greek crisis.

However, the difference between Dems in 2008 and the GOP in 2012 is that the Dems care passionately about their candidates, whereas Republican voters today seem ambivalent and confused. It’s possible that by summer they’ll be primed to toss the bums out and rally around a savior at the Tampa convention. So I don’t know that I agree with Yeselson.

Don’t bother, they’re here –I cannot let the day go by without commenting on “Lines Crossed: Separation of Church and State. Has the Obama administration trampled on Freedom of Religion and Freedom of Conscience?” That’s the hearing today chaired by Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), which consisted of a bunch of male clergymen complaining that they can’t have women working for them who might be using contraceptives.

Seriously. If you don’t have to pay for it, dudes, what is your problem?

Democrats had requested that a pro-choice woman be heard, and Daryl Issa refused. The hearing was not about birth control, he said. Except that it was about birth control. And all the news stories are calling it a hearing on contraception, and highlighting the fact that first panel consisted of only men. See Ed Kilgore, “When ‘framing’ Goes Horribly Wrong.”

However, it is not true there were no women’s voices heard today. NH Republican Jeanine Notter spoke up to let the panel know that birth control pills cause prostate cancer.

You can’t make this up.

Word is that Harry Reid is going to allow the Senate to vote on the Roy Blunt amendment that would allow employers to opt out of mandated health insurance coverage for “moral” reasons.

There are all kinds of polls out now that say a majority of the public favors President Obama’s policy on mandated birth control coverage. The battle with the bishops hasn’t hurt Obama even among Catholic voters.

If Republicans are clueless enough to keep fighting this fight, then let ’em. We could end up with a nice stockpile of videos of old white guys ranting about the immorality of family planning.

Speaking of old white guys — now that the GOP nomination race is between Frothy and Mittens, I want to point to some data from a recent CNN/ORC poll (click to enlarge).

Click to Enlarge

Note that women tend to favor Mittens and men prefer Frothy. Notice also the conspicuous lack of nonwhites and people under 50. Heh. You’d think with all their antipathy to birth control there’d be some younger folks represented in the sampling.