So, How Ridiculous Are Conservatives?

One reason why conservatives and Republican’ts are doing so poorly among the American electorate these days is that their priorities often come off as wrongheaded, when they don’t appear just downright weird. I mean, think about it: Over the weekend, GOP Representative Peter King of New York declared that health care reform is “not a major issue among the American people.” This at the same time as there are 46 million people with no health-care insurance in this country, worsening health concerns among Americans (obesity, swine flu, etc.), and ever-rising prices for health care that threaten the nation’s economic future. Does King live in a bunker someplace?

Meanwhile, the editorial page editor of the conservative Washington Examiner, Mark Tapscott, is all up in arms about Vice President Joe Biden using “Jesus Christ” as an expletive in an interview with The Wall Street Journal. According to The Huffington Post:

In an op-ed last week, Tapscott expressed outraged over the vice president’s use of the phrase “Jesus Christ” in an interview with The Wall Street Journal.

Speaking about Iran’s nuclear program, Biden had said, “I can see Putin sitting in Moscow saying, ‘Jesus Christ, Iran gets the nuclear weapon, who goes first?’ Moscow, not Washington.”

The language may seem innocuous enough to a layman. But to Tapscott, the blasphemy comes across loud and clear. The public silence in the face of this “hate speech,” Tapscott claims, has revealed a glaring double-standard ...

Biden wasn’t spreading hate speech, you dope. He was using a commonplace exclamation. If people like Tapscott would spend less time worrying about silly things like whether 21st-century politicians use “the Lord’s name” in vain, and instead show some concern for real-world matters, the country would be far better off. And maybe people would actually take them seriously.

At least they wouldn’t look so irrelevant.