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Music evolves. Housing design evolves. Anyone who has studied the history of the Republican Party knows that even the Republican Party has evolved over the decades.
But three out of the ten major Republican Party Presidential nomination candidates does not believe in Evolution. That is, they don't believe in Darwin's theory of Evolution by Natural Selection. Maybe they believe that animals and plants evolved over the ages by some other means, such as their God's direct engineering efforts. Maybe they believe the Universe and earth were created in 7 literal days. They did not get a chance to elaborate last night. Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas, Representative Tom Tancredo of Colorado, and former Governor Mike Huckabee of Arkansas all raised their hands to signal that they did not believe in Evolution.
Well former Democratic Presidential candidate (and three time loser) William Jennings Bryan did not believe in evolution either. There is some evidence that Bryant was a good man, but then he was never elected President.
You have to wonder about Sam, Mike, and Tom. Was their anti-evolution stand genuine, or a desperate plea for the votes of those who failed to get a decent education in America's public, private, or religious schools?
The current big three, John McCain, Rudolph Giuliani, and Mitt Romney, are not nutcases. They are fairly good representatives of the people who have already made it in America. They are going to keep the burden of taxation from the all-too-overloaded backs of the rich. They might even ease that burden for those whose incomes are a mere $100,000 to $200,000 per year. To a large extent they represent corporate America and international corporations as well. They are not against science, which has made their friends a heck of a lot of money. Rudolph Giuliani was even kind of pro-choice on the abortion issue. Which is not a bad tactic, considering that most of the other candidates are fighting over the hearts and minds of the Pro-Fetus voters.
Rudolph Giuliani wants the estate tax abolished. Like the old Republicans who campaigned for the abolition of slavery, he has some passion there. If the estate tax were abolished then people who inherit billions of dollars from their ancestors can just pay tax on the dividends (there is currently no tax on capital gains until an asset is sold) and pass along the whole bundle tax free to their descendents. The truly rich can live a nearly tax-free existence. No pesky 15% social security tax, none of that un-American income tax, and it you buy your stuff in the right states you can avoid sales tax too.
The Republican policy on illegal immigration varies but it seems to amount to another profit maximization scheme. As long as there are illegal immigrants there is a source of cheap labor. The only real problem with illegal immigration for them is if some terrorists slip in with the job-hungry or if their voter base gets disgusted and votes for an anti-immigrant Democrat.
It is sad that the Republican Party can't live without its aristocratic backers and the deluded poor peasants who dwell on their modern-day plantations. I kind of like the idea of the small-town era Republicans: honest, civic-minded and open-minded small business families who really were proud to be in the party that ended slavery and stood against the racist Democratic Party regime. They were the original backers of Planned Parenthood, national parks, and a de-politicized civil service. But those families have been wiped out by international corporations and Walmart, leaving behind a gang of irrational fools who worship money but overcompensate for that by refusing to see big picture realities like global warming, evolution, and the equality of men and women regardless of race, creed, or economic circumstance.