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Top Five Worst Planks in GOP Platform

Juan Cole 08/23/2012

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These are the promises that the Republican Party is making to us if it wins:

1. Outlawing abortion altogether, with no exceptions for the life and health of the mother, incest or rape.

2. Preventing the Department of Homeland Security from monitoring far right-wing hate groups (Republican House majority leader John Boehner said that the DHS unit looking at these groups was casting veterans as potential terrorists). Well, very few veterans are dangerous, but undeniably some are, and white supremacists often seek out military experience for the weapons training.

3. On the whole and by and large, the GOP is in favor of promoting biological illiteracy and denying the theory of evolution, among the most robust and well-established scientific theories. (Gravity is also a ‘theory’; the word doesn’t mean what they think it means.)

4. Promoting hatred of and fear of Muslims. While not all Republicans are in the same league as Michele Bachmann, Peter King of New York, or Joe Walsh of Illinois, the party has a severe problem with indulging in and enabling hate speech toward millions of American citizens of this faith. The Republican House has had 5 hearings on the alleged radicalization of American Muslims (which is not in evidence) but none about white hate groups. Some observers hold GOP demonizers responsible for the spate of attacks on mosques in the past month, since their discourse excuses hate speech.

5. The GOP stands for repealing the Affordable Care Act, “Obamacare,” and indeed want Todd Akin now not to run for the senate in Missouri out of fear that his foot in the mouth disease on rape and abortion will make him unelectable and then the Republicans won’t get control of the senate and won’t have the votes to repeal the ACA. That is, the RNC isn’t really horrified at what he said, they are just afraide enough women in Missouri will be to stop them from taking health care back away from 44 million Americans.

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About the Author

Juan Cole is the founder and chief editor of Informed Comment. He is Richard P. Mitchell Professor of History at the University of Michigan He is author of, among many other books, Muhammad: Prophet of Peace amid the Clash of Empires and The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. Follow him on Twitter at @jricole or the Informed Comment Facebook Page

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