Tiny band of crazies choosing the GOP nominee for the Leader of the Free World.

Choosing a president, GOP-style

Timothy Egan points out the miniscule Republican primary turnout. This explains the “massive” surges, as one candidate after another rises up to challenge Mitt Romney: the numbers are so small that only a few thousand emotional extremists make or break a candidates momentum. Not to mention the power of the most expensive television propaganda campaigns in primary history, fueled by the Supreme Republican Court’s edict that corporations are people.

the small fraction of Americans who are trying to pick the Republican nominee are old, white, uniformly Christian and unrepresentative of the nation at large.

None of that is a surprise. But when you look at the numbers, it’s stunning how little this Republican primary electorate resembles the rest of the United States. They are much closer to the population of 1890 than of 2012.

Given the level of media attention, we know an election of great significance is happening on the Republican side. But it’s occurring in a different place, guided by talk-radio extremists and religious zealots, with only a vague resemblance to the states where it has taken place. From this small world have emerged a host of nutty, retrograde positions, unpopular with the vast American majority.
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So far, three million voters have participated in the Republican races, less than the population of Connecticut. This means that 89 percent of all registered voters in those states have not participated in what is, from a horse-race perspective, a very tight contest.

Yes, we know Republicans don’t like their choices; it’s a meh primary. But still, in some states, this election could be happening in a ghost town. Less than 1 percent of registered voters turned out for Maine’s caucus. In Nevada, where Republican turnout was down 25 percent from 2008, only 3 percent of total registered voters participated.

This is not majority rule by any measure; it barely qualifies as participatory democracy.

Santorum, Romney, GOP want poor women to have more poor and disabled babies so they can complain about more welfare moms

Women's health: GOP would just Leave it to Beaver

John Cole tells in some detail the attempts by the panderers to cut not only birth control, and Planned Parenthood services, but also “free” prenatal testing designed to detect serious birth defects, and also Title X, a program which has had broad bipartisan support, including Nixon and Bush the elder. The result would be a step forty years into the past for reproductive care for women. These people are sick. And I’m not referring to women.

This is Mitt Romney on Title X, in November of 2011:

•Eliminate Title X family planning programs benefiting abortion groups like Planned Parenthood.

Title X:

Each year, the Title X program provides millions of women – regardless of age, income, or marital status – with family-planning and other reproductive-health services. In fact, nearly 75 percent of all U.S. counties have at least one Title X-funded clinic.Each year, more than five million women and men obtain services in almost 4,400 Title X-funded clinics.One in five women obtaining family-planning services depends on a clinic funded at least partially by Title X; for more than eight in 10 of these women, a Title X clinic is their sole source of family-planning services. Most of the women obtaining Title X services are young, poor, and have never given birth. The Title X program provides a particularly important source of affordable health care for women of color, who disproportionately work in low-wage jobs that do not offer health benefits. Nineteen percent of all Title X clients are black and 23 percent identified as Hispanic or Latino,although blacks make up 13 percent and Hispanics/Latinos make up 14 percent of the population. Almost 80 percent of all Title X clients are under the age of 30. Title X is particularly important to low-income women who do not qualify for Medicaid. Medicaid is the nation’s largest single funder of family-planning services. However, Medicaid generally limits eligibility to very poor women who are single, have a child (or are pregnant), and meet other stringent requirements. Title X provides services to a broader array of women: women with income under 100 percent of the federal poverty level must receive entirely subsidized services; women with income 101 to 250 percent of poverty are charged on a sliding scale; and women with income over 250 percent of poverty are charged full fees.