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While I’ve been saying that the GOP is broken and hopelessly dysfunctional, Rachel Maddow has come up with a new name for part of that dysfunction: Republicans are “post-policy.” To some extent, that’s because they’ll simply oppose whatever Barack Obama proposes, but there’s also an even more interesting aspect of it that they simply have given up on and lost the capacity for developing policy ideas.

And, no, it’s not just because they are conservatives and conservatives are inherently less likely to have policy ideas. A look at the evidence will demonstrate this.

Here’s the story: Over the last couple of decades, majority parties in the House of Representatives have taken to reserving the very first bill numbers for their party’s agenda. Normally, bills are just numbered in order, when they are introduced: H.R. 637 is usually the bill introduced just after H.R. 636 and just before H.R. 638. But that’s just custom, and at some point a new custom evolved to save H.R. 1 through H.R. 5, and then through H.R. 10, for important party agenda bills.

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Historical right-wing domination of the media

Traditionally, conservatives have almost always dominated direct mail solicitations, retained the best pollsters money could buy and paid for the most celebrated advertising makers. Message discipline is the first lesson for any Republican politician. Talk radio? unquestionably controlled by conservatives.

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In public, of course, prospective newspaper buyers continue to pretend that they are primarily interested in purchasing newspapers either to 1) preserve a venerated civic institution and objective journalism or 2) to seize an honest, straightforward business opportunity.

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My answer to the question about sadness should be self-evident: yes, of course I am sad, and if you aren't sad, you have no soul or aren't paying attention. That's because it should be sad to anyone to see a city terrorized into lockdown mode and Americans maimed and killed. That's a tragedy for the victims, sad for Boston, sad for America and sad for whole communities who are already being persecuted for the actions of individuals.

As I wrote in my syndicated newspaper column yesterday, there are no definitive answers to something as horrible as all that. But there are huge questions. Here are three to ponder at the end of an awful week:

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No one who supports the provision of safe abortion care to women excuses any of what Gosnell is accused of, from willfully gruesome conditions to sadistic treatment to infanticide. He is not typical, and there was, and has been, swift renunciation of his facility. But the case provides the ideal opportunity for the right-to-life movement to conflate his abusive clinic with all abortion as it's widely practiced in the U.S., and to focus on graphic later abortions, conveniently redirecting attention from their desire to ban all abortions for everyone. That desire, by the way, is being enacted into law explicitly in states like Arkansas and North Dakota, and implicitly with laws designed to close abortion clinics in states like Mississippi and Virginia.

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This month, the House Energy and Commerce Committee will hold a hearing on the policy. “The program has nearly tripled in size from $800 million in 2009 to $2.2 billion per year in 2012,” Republicans on the committee wrote in March. “American taxpayers — and we as their elected representatives — need to know how much of this growth is because of waste, fraud and abuse.”

Lifeline began during the Reagan administration, and was expanded during George W. Bush's presidency to include cellphone service. It's funded by phone bill fees that most people pay -- not, as some conspiracy theorists believe, by taxes. As the Washington Post reports:

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Confused? I can explain. The Romeike family aren’t just any immigrants. They are evangelical Christians from Germany. And, oh yeah, they’re white.

Uwe and Hannelore Romeike are devout Christians who want to home-school their five children. But under German law, attendance at an officially recognized school — whether a public school or a private religious or secular school — is mandatory. Facing over $10,000 in mounting fines and police escorting their children to school daily, the Romeikes were contacted by the Virginia-based Home School Legal Defense Association — which was looking to expand its work internationally --  and suggested the Romeike’s resettle in Morristown, Tenn., and apply for political asylum.

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For decades, Thatcher's gender provided some public relations cover for her most noxious politics. That was true even today in the White House's statement on her death, which included the following treacly sentence: "As a grocer’s daughter who rose to become Britain’s first female prime minister, she stands as an example to our daughters that there is no glass ceiling that can’t be shattered."

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If Democrats and Republicans were the true divide, the meager gun control measures recently introduced in the Senate would have the majority needed to pass. After all, there are 53 Democratic Senators (and two Independents who generally side with them). Moreover, this time, the threat of a GOP filibuster is not to blame. Yet the Democratic majority leader, Senator Harry Reid, removed the assault weapons ban from the draft bill because some 15 Democratic senators, in effect, supported the conservative pro-gun position, making up — with the Republican senators — that majority “conservative party.” Thanks to this party, the same legislative defeat is about to befall liberal proposals to curtail high-capacity magazines. This leaves only better background checks on the table, but these, too, will inevitably be rendered ineffective by the conservatives via the underhanded gutting of enforcement (more about this shortly).

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The empire he left behind is riven with bitter internal disputes, as BuzzFeed’s McKay Coppins detailed, and there is a dearth of young up-and-comers. James O’Keefe happily played this role for a while, but his star has since fallen as his legal troubles have mounted. Dana Loesch, the brash radio host who briefly helmed one of the Breitbart sites, has also been pushed aside (and sued over it).

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Speaking in an interview for the Weekly Standard's podcast, Kristol said that he finds "something pathetic" about politicians now coming out in support of gay marriage, and "jumping on the train because it looks fashionable."

"I’ve found it really distasteful," he said. "I mean I myself am socially conservative on the marriage issue but even if you’re not, just say what you believe and let the country decide."

He continued: "This kind of pathetic attempt: ‘Oh my god, young people especially are liberal so let’s just rush to cater to them.’ As if they’re going to respect you if you just embrace the views of some 26-year-old who doesn’t know anything honestly. Can’t adults say young people are sometimes wrong?"

h/t ThinkProgress.

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Watch:

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"And I think that's right," he added. "I don't care what this court does with this particular ruling, Proposition 8. I think the inertia is clearly moving in the direction that there is going to be gay marriage at some point nationwide."

Here's the audio, via Huffington Post:

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Here’s what I wrote in my original Salon essay:

In the interest of expediency and bringing as many unlikely conservative allies on board, the gay rights movement may give cover to or even amplify a set of narrow values that rank married families as better than unmarried families, two parents as better than one parent — norms that continue to divide America into good people and deserving families versus everyone else. And even if we temporarily succeed in getting gay folks added to the “good” category, is it worth it? Plus do we really think that’s the way we or anyone else will be treated equally?

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Republicans may begin to support gay marriage in full force, Huckabee said, "And if they do, they’re going to lose a large part of their base because evangelicals will take a walk."

“And it’s not because there’s an anti-homosexual mood, and nobody’s homophobic that I know of, but many of us, and I consider myself included, base our standards not on the latest Washington Post poll, but on an objective standard, not a subjective standard," he told Newsmax.

Huckabee continued: “I have great sympathy and extraordinary admiration for Sen. Portman. I consider him a friend and I value his work in the Senate and think he’s a great person. The mistake is that we sometimes base our public policy decisions on how we feel, how we think, maybe even some personal experiences, and we don’t regard a lot of these issues from the standpoint of an objective standard."

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“The compelling argument is on the side of homosexuals,” O’Reilly said. “That is where the compelling argument is. We’re Americans, we just want to be treated like everybody else.” He continued: “That’s a compelling argument, and to deny that you’ve got to have a very strong argument on the other side. And the other side hasn’t been able to do anything but thump the Bible.”

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This story was co-produced with NPR.

Imagine filing your income taxes in five minutes — and for free. You'd open up a pre-filled return, see what the government thinks you owe, make any needed changes and be done. The miserable annual IRS shuffle, gone.

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No doubt, you've probably caught this or a similar phrase in your Web surfing, your email box and your casual discussions. It is the conversation-ender du jour. Don't like the election results and the policies that follow? Deride them as proof America is "becoming California." Don't like a bill moving through your legislature? Cite it as more evidence your state is "turning into California." Don't like what Congress is doing on any given day? Write a screed bewailing America "turning into California."

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