Pandering

If we needed evidence of the devolution of the Republican party over the past few years, since the rise of the Tea Baggers, you need look no further than Mike Huckabee.

As Gail Collins reminds us in her column today, Huckabee was the likable candidate in the 2008 Republican primaries, the one who smiled a lot and wanted people to get along. As governor he signed a law requiring employers to cover contraception in their insurance plans. He supported a plan to allow children of illegal immigrants access to college scholarships. He was in favor of a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants.

 But that Mike Huckabee lost and he learned his lesson: angry and mean is the way to get ahead. Now he is against “amnesty,” against subsidized school breakfast programs, and against requiring health insurers to provide birth control coverage in their prescription drug coverage for women who “can't control their libido or their reproductive systems.” And he said this at a meeting of Republican National Committee that was ostensibly meeting to come up with a strategy to close the gender gap. He thinks he has a winning message for Republicans to take to the country.

It reminds me that the lesson a lot of Republican strategists and analysts took away from the last election was not that there was anything wrong with their message, but only with the way they had tried to sell it to the country.
 

This Republican progression from anti-abortion to anti-contraception seems to encapsulate the way in which the party has doubled down on stupid. If politicians must pander (and they probably must), why not to reason and sensibility?