The gutter campaign of John McCain

At times like this, when reason disappears completely from the national conversation, FCP asks itself: What would Molly Ivins have thought about this?

The great Texas battler for liberty had been hardened by decades of observing the extraordinary combination of cynicism and stupidity embodied by the Texas state legislature. But even Molly would have been shocked by the depravity of this year's Republican effort.

One of the things the great columnist might have meditated on is the danger in which we secular humanists have placed ourselves by failing to spend any time at all pondering what form the Antichrist might take in the 21st century. FCP still isn't completely down with the Antichrist concept, but if there is one, there is no longer any doubt at all about what color lipstick she would be wearing.

In Sarah Palin we have a woman who would do more damage to women's rights—and human rights—than anyone else who has ever stood for national office on a major party ticket. That is why Rush Limbaugh forced John McCain to pick her as his running mate.

In the Los Angeles Times, Gloria Steinem identified Palin as a young Phyllis Schlafly. Schlafly, of course, exercised huge influence over the Republican party, but until now no one had ever thought to nominate anyone just like her for vice president.

Steinem explained, "Palin's value to those patriarchs is clear: She opposes just about every issue that women support by a majority or plurality." Her extreme positions mark the death knell of any opposition McCain ever pretended to have to all of the most obscene positions of the extreme right wing of the Republican party. Palin opposes all stem cell research (not just the federally financed kind), all abortions, even in the case of rape or incest, and all sex education, except the abstinence-only kind, which we now know worked so well for her own daughter.

Steinem's summary continues: Palin believes in creationism, but not global-warming; she tried to use millions to shoot wolves from airplanes, but didn't spend enough money to fix a state education system with the lowest high school graduation rate in the nation, and she "runs with a candidate who opposes the Fair Pay Act but supports $500 million in subsidies for a natural gas pipeline across Alaska." She also believes that God supports her plan for an Alaskan pipeline and George Bush's way of waging war in Iraq.