I’ve often wondered what on earth it is that drives people to become Republicans.  Is it personal wealth and privilege?  Sometimes, undoubtedly.  Deep-seated bigotry?  That tends to play a role as well.  Stupidity?  Yes, but that only applies to voters, not the politicians themselves.

The likeliest answer, however, isn’t grounded in such subjective, and ultimately unknowable, value systems. 

College Republicans at campuses around the country pay Ann Coulter plenty of buxxx to spew grotesque bigotry as entertainment. I attended Fordham and I was relieved to see this reaction to the invitation by Father Joseph McShane.

“The College Republicans, a student club at Fordham University, has invited Ann Coulter to speak on campus on November 29. The event is funded through student activity fees and is not open to the public or the media. Student groups are allowed, and encouraged, to invite speakers who represent diverse, and sometimes unpopular, points of view, in keeping with the canons of academic freedom. Accordingly, the University will not block the College Republicans from hosting their speaker of choice on campus.

“To say that I am disappointed with the judgment and maturity of the College Republicans, however, would be a tremendous understatement….”

The Casual Vacancy, Harry Potter author J.K Rowling’s first “adult” novel, must have been inspired by Yeats’ “The Circus Animals’ Desertion.” And, despite the setting in a small, West England town, it is a fitting accompaniment to an American politics grown rotten. It is certainly no escape, though it does lessen the pain.

Rowling’s book isn’t a political novel as much as it is a contemporary take on a traditional English-countryside yarn. Still, it describes with painful detail the pettiness and prejudice that floats like a smelly fog through the streets of Pagford, a town coping badly with the unexpected death of a leading citizen and one of the few empathetic souls within its limits.

As Digby says, conservatism cannot fail. It can only be failed.

So now that we have one of the most conservative major parties ever to present a presidential nominee, running on one of the most conservative platforms ever presented by a national party, that nominee, Mitt Romney, is in danger of failing.

Sam Stein and Karen Finney had a great conversation with Alex Wagner on The Last Word about Ann Coulter’s remarkable call for donors to withhold fundage to Mitt Romney’s campaign — “big donors” — until Andrea Saul is fired for citing Romneycare in Massachusetts as a possible solution for a dead lady cited in the new (controversial?) pro Obama PAC’s ad.

The reason Palin and Perry failed is because they had no interest in working hard enough to play their roles as Potemkin mavericks convincingly. And that’s because despite the efforts of the GOP moneymen and operatives to groom them as puppet-like fronts for the right-wing agenda, someone it never sunk in for them that they were just flunkies who were expected to be disciplined in executing their roles.

The Herman Cain sexual harassment story is moving too fast to keep up, but did he really believe such charges and settlement wouldn’t explode. But the right wing is anxious to pin his sins on liberal media, because, as Ann Coulter opines, “we have better blacks.” Huh?

Tony Perkins is not genuine himself. Tony Perkins lies. Tony Perkins hates. Why does CNN provide him op-ed space to blather about Values nowadays, as if his opinion is important and valuable to GOP primary voters?

In his soulful book, Beauty: the Invisible Embrace, John O’Donohue writes:

“The human soul is hungry for beauty; we seek it everywhere – in landscape, music, art, clothes, furniture, gardening, companionship, love, religion and in ourselves.”

Politics is conspicuously absent from the list. And that made me think, can politics be beautiful?

American politics has taken a bloody turn. Much of the Right’s agenda is punitive and built upon vengeance against those they have defined as domestic enemies. They seek to disenfranchise their political foes, deny health care to “others,” leave the elderly to die alone in the streets, and abandon public schools so the privileged can use the tax money for their exclusive private schools.