48 Percent of the GOP Is ... Not Brilliant

United States Constitution, Article VI, paragraph 3: "[N]o religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States."

Hey, all you Constitution-reading, all-so-tolerant elitists, [that's goes double for you, Mikey Weinstein, your blood will run wild and free with the other non-believers' in a long river] so now you're going tell us that Muslims should be allowed to run for president?

Just channeling Sarah Palin and Rod Parsley there, folks. Didn't mean to scare you.

What is scary is reading Ronald Brownstein's column in the National Journal Friday discussing the political culture where "a plurality of Republicans said Muslims should not be allowed to run for president."

In a national Time magazine poll released last week, just under half of all Americans agreed that Islam is more likely than other faiths to promote violence against nonbelievers. But that number rose to 70 percent among Republicans and nearly three-fourths among conservatives.

Fully 55 percent of all Americans said they believed that most U.S. Muslims are patriotic; but only 42 percent of Republicans and 38 percent of conservatives agreed.
Perhaps most strikingly, 43 percent of conservatives and a 48 percent plurality of Republicans said Muslims should not be allowed to run for president. Only about one-fourth of Democrats and independents agreed.

So does that 48 percent of Republicans not support the United States Constitution, Article VI, paragraph 3 stating that " .... no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States"?

Here's a wild guess: These GOPers have not read the United States Constitution and they do not think about it.

To borrow from the famous exchange between William Jennings Bryan and Clarence Darrow during the Scopes Monkey Trial (1925), a spectacle that put American ignorance on trial in a legal challenge to a Tennessee statute banning evolution being taught in public schools:

"I do not think about things I don't think about," said the confused religious fundamentalist, Jennings Bryan; to which Darrow replied caustically, "Do you think about the things you do think about?"

Much of America looks on with a mixture of incredulity, alarm and loathing as the confused later-day Bryan bigots run wild.

We hope that things are not as bad they seem. Maybe it 1998 again and only the talking heads care about this manufactured spectacle and like in '98, 70 percent of the populace is using their collective head and don't hold views comporting to the Newts, Sarahs and the like.

But face it folks, in 2010 a plurality of Republicans do not think much about the things they do think about.