So I’m reading the news this morning, and to add to my depression over the fact that a large percentage of Americans don’t accept evolution I run across this little gem.

Here’s the highlight from the article — the 63% of Republicans polled believe that Iraq had WMD.  Let’s contrast this with the nation as a whole.  In the panicked, drum beat to war of 2003 70% of American believed Iraq had WMD thanks to a relentless campaign of misinformation on the part of the Bush administration.

Self-identified Republicans only make up about 27 – 30% of the American electorate, but 63% of them will not accept facts and evidence.

And 64% of Republican’s have always believed or come to believe that the President was not born in the United States.

This is really scary.  Not because they are nuts, but because the Republican party used to be a venerable institution.  They occasionally had ideas with which I agreed.  What has happened to this party represents a fundamental danger to our nation and democracy.  When the only other viable political party lives in an alternate universe where facts and actual empirical evidence  are not permitted to penetrate governance cannot occur.

There is no point of contact unless independents and Democrats are willing to accept fairy tales, scary stories with no basis in objective reality,  and if we govern that way we’re doomed. We’s also doomed if we don’t govern.  There are real problems in this country — collapsing infrastructure, clean water, education, a workable and just health care system, debt, etc. etc. (in the interest of not fighting with any conservative readers I’ve left out climate change, and just listed those thins upon which, I think, I hope, all of us can agree.

The republicans have to come back and reconnect with the real world if we are to have any hope.