One of the most baffling aspects of the current presidential campaign is why people with the most to lose from the Republican platform insist on supporting Mitt Romney. These people (and I can't single out the tea-partiers because it's more than just they) seem certain that the country needs to be left alone to work out its ills, that we need smaller government, less intervention, more state control. They're the people who rally against "Obamacare" and they're the very people who will find themselves unable to get health insurance when they need it. It makes no sense.
Or it didn't. Then I had a mini-epiphany. (I don't have full-fledged ones because they hurt my brain.) The connection has to be religious. Many on the right profess a Christian conservatism, coming down hard against a woman's right to choose, stem cell research, gay marriage, and other concepts that mainstream Americans mostly espouse when you ask them. These radical conservatives see in Romney a sympathetic partner. (The fact that he is not a member of any Christian sect is one more irony.) But here's the problem: his party's platform is not Christian, where good people look out for one another, help one another, are kind to one another. It is a platform more in keeping with Darwin than with Jesus. Romney (and more so, Ryan) subscribe to the law of the jungle, to the survival of the strong at the expense of the weak. "Pull yourselves up by your bootstraps" is all well and good as long as you own boots.
I don't think that any one president can ruin the country, but I do know that he can create issues that will outlast his presidency and do harm long after he has left the White House. But then, if so many Americans believe Romney is the way to go, then they believe that the law of the jungle supersedes everything else. And they're right—ask any 1%-er.
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