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" (Optional soundtrack to this blog post...)      The blog grows increasingly astonished at what feathers in the wind there are composing the Republican party these days. Plan A for this election year was to focus &amp;quot;like a laser beam on the economy,&amp;quot; to borrow a phrase from Bill Clinton. This was going to be the train to glory for Willard Romney. However, a strange thing happened. Suddenly, the most prominent Republicans, from the presidential candidates to the congressional leadership to the most prominent slugnutties on the radio, were all talking at once about contraception and sex and what ladies do with their ladyparts. This sudden, erratic reorientation of the laser beam is now being blamed on the nasty media. Just this morning, on my man Chuck Todd&amp;#039;s teevee show, there was a whole panel of young pundits puzzling over how this possibly could have happened. The answer is very simple: The Republican party, and the conservative &amp;quot;movement&amp;quot; that agitates its base into political action, is completely demented. It can&amp;#039;t focus exclusively on anything, let alone something as nuanced and ambiguous as &amp;quot;the economy.&amp;quot; There are too many crazy forces pulling in too many crazy directions. The gravimetric forces are out of control, and there&amp;#039;s not a single influential figure in the party, or the movement, with sufficient gravitas to resist them. It&amp;#039;s scatterbrained. It can&amp;#039;t help but chase after the small shiny objects of its several obsessions. Its short-term memory \u2014 for the Schiavo mess, to name only one spectacular conservative flameout \u2014 is completely shot.While I still don&amp;#039;t think the whole contraception &amp;quot;issue&amp;quot; is the big winner that Democratic optimists think it is \u2014 not until I see a widespread Democratic campaign to commit the party to an unambiguous support of the right to women to all reproductive health-care, including the right to choose \u2014 I have to admit that the Republicans are doing their damndest to make a winner out of the issue all on their own. After the immensely silly Blunt Amendment went down in the Senate yesterday, John Boehner had a chance to re-focus the laser beam on the economy. This is what he said: &amp;quot;I think it&amp;#039;s important for us to win this issue.&amp;quot; You have to be kidding. Is he seriously intimating that he might enlist in the ongoing war on ladyparts the cool voices of calm reason that now make up the Republican caucus in the House of Representatives? Good god, you could sell tickets just to watch the CSPAN feed of the speeches on that one. They won&amp;#039;t stop because they can&amp;#039;t stop. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a12964/gop-economy-focus-7038015/>