Here's Your Coming Republican Party Platform

So you claim you're a true-blue Republican? Then take a gander at your coming party platform, just adopted by the Maine Republican Party. The tea-baggers took over the convention, as they are doing all across the country, and passed this official platform:

• Elimination of the Department of Education
• Elimination of the Federal Reserve
• Demands an investigation of "collusion between government and industry in the global warming myth"
• Supports the adoption of "Austrian Economics"
• Declares that "'Freedom of Religion' does not mean 'freedom from religion'" (which I guess makes atheism illegal)
• Insists that "healthcare is not a right"
• Calls for the abrogation of the "UN Treaty on Rights of the Child"
• Calls for the abrogation of the "Law Of The Sea Treaty"
• Declares that we must resist "efforts to create a one world government"

I really like this quote:

Dan Billings, who has served as an attorney for the Maine GOP, called the new platform "wack job pablum" and "nutcase stuff."

Well, Dan, it is certainly nutcase stuff -- but it's now YOUR party's official platform. Just so we're clear -- your party is now officially opposed to the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Tell me, is it because you support involving children in military conflicts (you LIKE child soldiers?), or is it because you think child pornography isn't that bad? Because those are some of the things this treaty outlaws. Oh, and it also forbids capital punishment for children. So now your party supports executing children?

I could spend a few moments on your objections to the Law of the Sea Treaty, but instead let's jump to that reference to Austrian Economics. Basically, this school of thought believes that since human activity is complex, it is impossible to accurately or completely model an economic system. I might argue with that, given a large enough sample, but whatever. What's fun is where you go next: therefore, since the whole thing is just too complex, the only thing for government to do is just leave it completely alone. In other words, a national economic system with no regulations, no rules, no nothing -- just wild-west capitalism. How's that Wild-West Wall Street working for you now?

And of course, there's that tin-foil-hat comment about global-warming myth and collusion. Tell that to the island that disappeared earlier this year due to rising sea levels.

While I find your platform alternately amusing and alarming, I'll say this for it -- I am going to get no end of hilarity watching Mitch McConnell try to defend it.

Of course, now Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe, two moderate Republican senators, also get to defend it. My question is this: if you Republicans throw out all the moderates and all the moderate-conservatives and all the normal conservatives, what will you have left? And how will you win elections with only 18% or less of the voters?

But hey -- it's your platform. Keep moving to the right. We'll gladly take the people you're driving out of your party with stuff like this. Thanks!