The Republican party, looking for votes, started a number of years ago to court Christian fundamentalists, who had, up to that point, largely disengaged from American politics for various reasons, primary among them being the Government's role in the legalization of abortion, and what they viewed as the Government's betrayal of their right to free speech by banning prayer in public schools (never mind that these are arguably two sides of the same piece of legislation, namely the First Amendment to the US Constitution)

As a free thinker and atheist with an aversion to nutcases, then, I have naturally gravitated towards the Democrats - not that the Democratic Party is always correct in everything it does, but at least the Dems don't seem to suffer from the same blinkered "we shall brook no dissent" groupthink that seems to come from the Repubs.

Now, however, more than ever, it seems that the Republican Party has a problem that it largely brought on itself in the shape of the demagoguery and outright fascism and statism espoused by its more devoutly religious adherents. Lew Rockwell, Libertarian and big thinker, has more here.

My own analogy is that the Republicans' search for votes has been like that of a body-builder looking for ways to "bulk up" and get muscle mass. The Repubs, in courting the Christian religious conservatives, opted to give themselves small, fast-growing tumors in strategic places - in their biceps and triceps, delts and glutes - to make themselves "bigger" and "win" the contest aka the election. Well guess what - the tumors have metastasized, and I'm not sure there will now be much of a body left once the cancer is excised. Even supposing that surgery is even an option any more.

Annie, get your gun.