Good news: Democrats generally like their candidates, Republicans don’t

According to a CBS/New York Times poll conducted over the past week, by 63% of Democrats are satisfied with their Presidential candidates as a whole, while only 38% of Republicans are satisfied with McCain, Giuliani, Romney et al. I hope that's good news. Certainly some Republicans don’t think the candidates are reliably right-wing enough. But perhaps moderate, decent Republicans – you know, avoid foreign entanglements, balance the budget, limited government -- are showing their disgust for the candidates in the recent South Carolina debate. That's where they competed to raucous cheers of the most committed Republicans on who could be the most warlike, the most pro-torture, the most in favor of a kangaroo-court system of justice, and of domestic electronic spying without concern for the U.S. Constitution.

Glenn Greenwald reminds us of a near-endorsement of genocide that neo-conservative Republican guru John Podhoretz registered last year. By phrasing it as a hypothetical question, Podhoretz is saved in the nick of time from an accusation that can stick, but he nonetheless is justifiably damned by presenting the question as one that reasonably can be answered in the affirmative.

What if the tactical mistake we made in Iraq was that we didn't kill enough Sunnis in the early going to intimidate them and make them so afraid of us they would go along with anything? Wasn't the survival of Sunni men between the ages of 15 and 35 the reason there was an insurgency and the basic cause of the sectarian violence now?

We should have killed all Sunni men between the ages of 15 and 35! Cold-blooded murder of several million people, ho hum. This is what the Grand Old Party has come to. It has become an uncivilized, barbarian political party that is deliberately trying to destroy the Constitution of the United States of America and the rule of law. What the American press has become is one that makes no comment when an important Republican writer suggests that genocide would fine and dandy if Americans do it. Ho hum.