Jim DeMint states the obvious (about Palin), then goes off the rails again (about democracy)

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Right-wing Republican Sen. Jim DeMint, who hosted Republican candidates at a forum in his home state of South Carolina yesterday, said it "doesn't appear" Sarah Palin will run for the GOP presidential nomination but still had some lovely things to say about her:

She's done a lot, I think, to engage the American people and stir things up, which we really needed to do, to get American citizens more involved in the process. It made a big difference in the last election. My hope is it'll make an even bigger difference in the next election, as people take back their government.

There's no doubt Palin has generated a great deal of political arousal, if more with the media than with voters (let's not forget that many of her chosen candidates fared miserably in the '10 midterms), but... wait... what? Take back the government? From whom?

Don't Republicans control the House? Aren't they able to paralyze the Senate with the filibuster? Doesn't the Supreme Court lean right, 5-4, with a conservative chief justice in place for many years to come?

Oh, right, it's about Obama, that progressive firebrand in the White House.

Or not. (How exactly has Obama been so horrible for Republicans? He hasn't, but extremists like DeMint won't accept even Republican-oriented compromise.)

Basically, what DeMint means is that the government should be taken back from the majority of Americans who voted for it.

And, basically, he won't be happy until America is a one-party autocracy / theocracy governed by extremist Republicans like himself.

This is what he and his ilk think of democracy, of government of, by, and for the people.

Who said that, "government of the people, by the people, for the people"? Abraham Lincoln, of course, a Republican.

If anyone would loathe today's GOP, a party dominated by the likes of DeMint and Palin, and most of those running for to be its nominee for president, it would be that great man.