Obsessive Compulsive Disorder

Billmon diagnoses the Republicans for us:

Iraq is in flames, Iran is a nuclear crisis (whether or not it need be) the immigration debate is raging, oil is at $70 a barrel, global climate change is accelerating, the post-Katrina recovery effort is floundering, there is no budget for the coming fiscal year.

And the Republicans are preparing their agenda for the fall elections:

GOP Campaign to Focus on Flag Burning, Gay Marriage, Abortion

[...]

Instead, the conservative movement – particularly its "social conservative" wing – is starting to resemble the thumbnail definition of monomania: i.e. the process of thinking more and more about less and less.

[...]

The propaganda ministers of the Republican Party, meanwhile, have made it their business to learn this code and to manipulate it in ways that will whip the faithful into a frenzy – while at the same time appealing to a broader, less indoctrinated audience that is also concerned (not fanatical, but concerned) about such issues.

It's really quite clever, not to mention extremely effective. Kevin Phillips has tactfully referred to it as the creation of a "rogue coalition." I, on other hand, would call it something else. But that's another story.