Shock the Donkey

Repub­li­cans are addicted to sex. And when I say this I’m not refer­ring to the likes of David Vit­ter, John Ensign, Mark Foley, Larry Craig, Newt Gin­grich and Mark San­ford, among many oth­ers. At least those men have been hon­est enough to act on their sex­ual urges. I’m talk­ing about the legions of right-​​wing politi­cians and vot­ers who are addicted to dark, pri­vate, obses­sive thoughts about sex, and who devote so much energy to brood­ing about the sex lives of others.

An addic­tion is defined as a phys­i­cal or emo­tional need that is all-​​consuming, almost impos­si­ble to resist, and has enough neg­a­tive con­se­quences to cause sig­nif­i­cant dif­fi­cul­ties in one’s life. Con­sider what the Repub­li­can party is pre­pared to sac­ri­fice in order to feed its addic­tion. They just came within a hair of shut­ting down the government—and thereby destroy­ing their stand­ing with inde­pen­dent voters—in order to defund Planned Par­ent­hood, of all things. They are pre­pared to sig­nif­i­cantly weaken the mil­i­tary over Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. They are rapidly los­ing cred­i­bil­ity with the pub­lic over their intractable oppo­si­tion to gay mar­riage. And yet their addic­tion dri­ves them onward in a self-​​destructive orgy of indulgence.

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