Republican lies don't trouble me too much. Lately, they haven't really been getting away with too much, except with the core Kool Aid drinkers. Their trouble right now is the truth. They are starting to trouble themselves, considerably, by letting the truth slip out, as more and more of their candidates clearly, publicly and prominently identify themselves as intolerant, doctrinaire, sectarian theocrats.

One who governs or intends to govern "as a representative of God" fits the definition of theocrat. This week, in an unguarded moment of public candor, Indiana Republican, Richard Mourdock, running to take Dick Lugar's U.S. Senate Seat, portrayed, as clearly as humanly possible, that his party's stance on reproductive choice is 100% pure theocracy.



"The only exception I have to have an abortion is in that case of the life of the mother," Mourdock said. "I struggled with it myself for a long time, but I came to realize that life is that gift from God and I think even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape that it is something God intended to happen."

IIRC, the Republican Party platform doesn't even specify an exception to save the life of the mother, and that would be the even more principled position for Republicans like Mourdock (and there are a bunch of them). After all, if it's a choice between two lives, why not let God decide? Who needs doctors and the woman interfering with such sacred things? Still, I suppose even the Republicans can't tolerate the optics of forcing a woman to die rather than allow an abortion.

Notwithstanding that inconsistency, however, Mr. Mourdock's remarks prove, along with those of Todd Akin and the identical positions taken by so many GOP House and Senate candidates, that sectarian religious belief provides the sole rationale for the reproductive rights restrictions that such Republicans would enact, if voters allowed them to govern. Modern Republicans now explicitly admit that they want to govern as representatives of God, that is, as unapologetic theocrats.

Any one of these Republicans would likely shrug and say "Why not?" If God fearing Americans want to vote for it, why shouldn't sectarian religious beliefs dictate the restrictions and obligations of public, civil law? There is an answer to this.

The Constitution of the United States constrains what government may require or prevent citizens from doing, or saying or what their government may impose upon them. The Constitution allows no religious test for public office; it forbids government to lend itself to the establishment of the beliefs of any religious sect.

Private practice of religion is Constitutionally free from governmental interference under principles and distinctions that are still mostly clear and well established by centuries of common sense Supreme Court jurisprudence. Keeping religion out of government has always been the counterpoint to that. But now, modern Republicans want to chuck all of that out of the window and enact their religious beliefs and rules of behavior into public law, so as, for example, to force a rape victim to bear a rape baby because, you know, God.

If the Constitution actually tolerates the enactment of sectarian religious doctrine to control the reproductive choices of women and their doctors, there is nothing to stop religious crackpots from taking control of anything else in American life that strikes their fancy. If America requires a regressive income tax code because Jesus, then so be it.

I'm starting to fell like I really do need salvation. Not from my sins. From theirs.

PS: I mentioned above that there are a bunch of Republican candidates just like Richard Mourdock. Step out into the tall grass if you would like to watch Rachel Maddow's coverage of the apparently growing list of them.

