Needed: A Pill for Pandering

Richard Cohen in the Washington Post, Thursday, August 4, 2005; Page A23:

When an otherwise reasonable man starts to make no sense at all, it is standard practice in emergency rooms to test for West Nile virus or encephalitis or a bad reaction to one drug or another. If, however, that man is a politician, then no test is needed. Delirium is caused by running for president as a moderate Republican. No one can do that and keep his sanity. To back up my medical diagnosis I offer the recent statements of George Pataki, governor of New York, and Mitt Romney, governor of Massachusetts.

[snip]

It has become clear that a viable Republican presidential candidate must oppose abortion, stem cell research, the morning-after pill, gay marriage and, for good measure, evolution. At the very least, you have to offer a good word for "intelligent design," as the president did just the other day in the single dopiest statement of his presidency. These are positions that defy logic -- not each and every one of them but as a totality. Taken together, they require GOP presidential candidates to take a kind of loyalty oath to ignorance, to see virtually every issue through a religious prism.

[snip]