Our Sad Sick Friend

For a long time now - long before we even thought about creating this publication - we've been noticing both the fractures and homogenization of the Republican Party and those on the political right in America. Sadly, as though they've been overcome by a disease or some kind of growth, conservatives that we've known and watched at all levels have become more closed minded, and less tolerant of those with different views - especially over the last ten to fifteen years.

Tuesday night's GOP debate was a perfect display of - as Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen also noted - the obvious narcissism of minor differences that the current crop of GOP candidates for the office of President share.

It's not that there aren't legitimate differences between the candidates. For example, most of the candidates may not like The Fed, but they don't want to abolish it. Ron Paul, however, certainly does - and with the release of the audit of The Fed, we can't say he's entirely wrong to want to make massive changes there, with what The Fed has become.

For all of Rick Perry's attacking Mitt Romney Tuesday night over who did Romney's landscaping, Perry obviously believes in allowing immigrant children who were brought to the U.S. as youngsters, to be allowed to pay in-state college tuition rates, as is the law in Texas. Many of the other candidates vehemently disagree with him on that point.

Herman Cain insists his 9-9-9 plan would work to lower taxes. Nearly everyone else who knows anything about taxes says it won't.

All of these issues, while they show some minor individual differences, also tend to highlight a single sad fact. For Americans who are on the political right, political purity, as we've noted previously, has had some dire effects on their chosen political party - like nearly constant infighting.

The single worst effect is lack of original thinking.

For example, not a single GOP candidate focused primarily during Tuesday night's debate on the biggest issue in America right now: jobs.

The second biggest issue in America right now - inequality - is one that certain Republican candidates addressed with derision, if they mentioned it at all. They had no real solutions for the inequality Americans are suffering at present, and appeared to have no new ideas on how to make things better  - even while polls continue to note that many Americans who are part of the Republican base now side with the Occupy movement.

While many of the Republican candidates piled on Gov. Romney for Massachusetts' nearly universal health care insurance system - "Romneycare", as it's known - being a basis for the Affordable Care Act of President Obama, not a one of them had a workable, end-to-end solution to replace the ACA.

We agree that it's good for a single, large group to have some similar principles that it's many different members can gather around.

However, when the differences inside that group cause the kind of pointless bickering one might see from a multi-headed monster, without giving any significant benefit to the group's members, we tend to think members of that group who refuse to leave it are either crazy or ill.