GOP out of touch with Americans

"GOP Priorities out of touch with Americans," crowed an email BuzzFlash at Truthout received today from the Democratic House Leadership Office.
Call it a partisan claim (we get similar boasting emails from the GOP leadership), but the facts of a new New York Times (NYT) poll cited in the correspondence appear to bear out the partisan assertion.
On social issue after issue, the Republican leadership seems to be arguing on the wrong side of the population divide. By a wide majority, including Catholics, Americans back Obama's contraceptive policy. That may be because while the Catholic bishops are all male, an estimated 97 percent of Catholic women have used birth control. Now - if they are insured - the White House is offering it to them and their families for free. If any party should understand the power of the word "free" in politics, it should be the GOP.
Then again, there's the Republican catering to homophobia. However, most Americans back civil unions of some sort, according to the NYT and other polls, which means an increased national acceptance of rights for those who are gay.
One of the NYT findings the Democrats cite is that "67 percent of Americans believe taxes should be increased on those earning more than one million dollars a year to lower the budget deficit, compared to only 29 percent who do not." So much for again extending the Bush tax cut on millionaires.
The NYT also found that "when asked to choose between changing Medicare, Social Security, or the military in order to cut spending an overwhelming 52 percent of respondents picked the military - while just 15 percent said Medicare, 13 percent selected Social Security, and 10 percent replied with none." Whatever happened to that "peace dividend" when we ended the Vietnam War decades ago? Americans, apparently, want to know.
Meanwhile, the GOP aspirants for the presidency are duking it out with variations on dog-whistle appeals to the logically challenged, racially charged Tea Party and the religious extremist wing of the GOP.
More and more, the Republican Party seems to be a last stand contingent for returning to 19th-century America.
In addition to the New York Times, an increasing number of polls indicate that modernity in public opinion is sweeping aside those US citizens who want to encase the nation in some sort of historical museum. Perhaps that is why they are so angry and bitter.
Mark Karlin
Editor BuzzFlash at Truthout