The Pro Life Party ? Um-hmmm...

Really? The Pro Life Party.

The Rethugs have gone out of their way over the years, ever since Roe v. Wade, to brand themselves as "pro-life". They even went so far as to make a bunch of huge-lettering "Choose Life" t-shirts available through churches and youth groups and whatnot, to the point where my pre-adolescent daughter came home with one from somewhere.

"Do you know what it means?" I asked her. She said she did, but it turned out to be one of those "kinda sorta a whole bunch but not really" things. After a little foray into parental education, she came away with a more balanced view, but I had to hand it to the Rethugs and their minions in the fundo churches: They do know how to brand an issue. Never mind that they don't really believe in what they are bible-thumping over. That doesn't matter. They are "Pro Life", which leaves the rest of us to be, what? Pro Death? That's really not working for us, is it? But that's what happens when we let them define us.

So what are we to make of the Pro Life Party now? Last week they erupted into frenzied applause when PRick Perry preened about the stage and crowed over the number of death row inmates he had murdered.

I didn't get to watch last night's "debate" for some technical reasons (satellite dish problems), but I awoke to the news that Crazy-Old-Man Ron Paul got the Teabaggers rockin' when he talked about "personal responsibility" and health care.

It appears that if you get sick and don't have insurance, or if your insurance cuts you off, that's pretty much on you. You should have known better and planned for it. That's what Ron Paul would have done to this hypothetical patient -- turned him over to the good graces of "Christian" charity. Society has no useful role in making the potentially ill be healthy or keeping the soon-to-be-dead from fulfilling their destiny as inhabitants of a morgue-bound body bag.

When moderator Wolf Blitzer called him on it -- "Congressman, are you saying that society should just let him die?" -- the crowd erupted into shouts of "Yeah!"

And they are the Pro-Life Party. Uhhhh, yeah... okay....