Hot legislative action, that is.

Apparently not content to wait for the day when an openly Christian man (because women should stay in the kitchen making babies, which would be unhygenic if you believed in that Satan-inspired germ “theory” of disease) can be elected President, the nation’s evangelicals (read: people so insecure they can’t be Christian if anyone around them deviates in the slightest) demand that the Republicans do more to push their agenda.

Wow, we get a couple of extra stem cell lines and it’s the End Times? What about the delay of Plan B, various wars to ensure the State of Israel fulfills the preconditions for the End of the World as described in Revelations, federal funding for religious organizations, and official support for denying various swaths of science?

To the extent their agenda has failed in the legislative branch when compared to the executive branch, it goes to show how simultaneously corrupting and centralizing our system is. The Republicans are trying to buy a permanent majority with an expansion of government that would make a socialist blush…but that also means the evangelicals, stuck at most at 39% on issues like abortion, won’t get all they want lest it disturb the electoral success of Republicans.

It also means that if we elected a Libertarian government in the next election, you needn’t worry about government being reduced to a tenth of its current size. In fact, I’d be willing to wager that government wouldn’t be cut by a tenth, though it might actually be reduced in any political scenario that sees libertarians becoming popular enough to take over (such a scenario is pretty unlikely, as most people would rather believe that a great bearded man in the sky and a great clean-shaven man in the White House can make everything better for them without effort on their part, as long as neither seriously interfere in their ability to chase venal pleasures). The current political system rewards the buying of votes.

But an awful lot of evangelical votes have been bought, so they should count their filthy lucre and enjoy a nice, warm cup of shut the fudge* up.

*Sanitized for Tony Perkins’s protection.