The whole purpose of my blog, republicans4freedom, is to point out the extremism that has become popular in my party. My hope is that rational conservatives will then work to help bring the GOP back to the common-sense middle. The truth is that our party has gone off the deep end. It’s as if we’re watching the slow, painful death of a major political party.

Even though there was a lot of hyperventilating about how the original rule requiring employers to provide insurance coverage for contraceptives as part of free preventive care might hurt President Obama politically, the reality is the vast majority of the country supports the idea, even before the “accommodation” that garnered more support.

The ranks of the uninsured continued to grow last year according to Gallup. Their poll found that 17.1 percent of adults did not have health insurance in 2011, which is a significant increase from the 16.4 percent in 2010. It’s part of a long run trend driven by higher costs leading to a decline in employer-provided insurance, and worsened by unemployment. One error in the ACA was that its expanded insurance coverage does not kick in until 2014.

For years the American conservative movement pandered to a Christian Right they mocked in private to leverage election victories. Trust me, I heard plenty of Republican consultants and officeholders refer to them privately as “the crazies” in the ’80s and ’90s. Now the religious zealots are leading the GOP around by the nose.

So here comes “Culture Wars, The Sequel,”

Beyond the details now pouring out from Dayen, Yves Smith and others, what are we seeing?

The Obama Administration has followed a predictable pattern we now recognize. It has consistently functioned like criminal defense counsel, whose mission is to get their criminal clients, the major corporations and executives who fund their elections, off with no admission of guilt, no forced resignations, and as little harm to their reputation, or that of the counsel, as possible. To do this, they neutralize anyone with an ounce of public purpose in their veins.

During last night’s “Your Interview with the President” event sponsored by Google+, President Obama and Google completely and shamefully ignored the dominant questions — about marijuana — submitted by the American people. Questions about marijuana policy reform dominated almost all of the top “most popular question” slots, but Obama ignored them.

I can’t use the photo, so I will direct readers to their own link and I will direct you NOT to Jan Brewer’s finger (or her mouth for that matter which looks as if she is screaming at the top of her lungs… though perhaps there was engine noise and she just wanted the President to hear what she had to say), but to the President’s right arm and hand (which you can’t see but which you can sort of figure out where it is from the angle and so on). He has moved in and is either putting his hand or trying to put his hand on her arm (perhaps on her elbow). He is trying to draw her in, reduce the distance between them.

When you have the kind of power Grover Norquist has held — namely, decades of unquestioned dictatorial control over the Republican Party as its grand ayatollah of anti-tax orthodoxy — it’s easy for a wee bit of hubris to creep into your thinking. The result is the occasional burst of excessive honesty, as exemplified by [...]

I’m of two minds about President Obama’s shout out for Senate rules reform in his State of the Union speech. I’m glad he brought attention to the need for reform, but mostly I’m very disappointed he proposed to eliminate the filibuster only for appointments and not everything else.

Since President Obama took office the percentage of uninsured people in America has been steadily raising and has now reached a new high. That’s primarily the result of long term trends, rising health care costs, and the huge spike in unemployment during the economic crash, as workers lost their employer-provided insurance. But if puts a focus on the political decision to delay the ACA’s coverage expansions until 2014.