Executing 234 people isn’t usually something to applaud. Applause, however, was the overwhelming response of the crowd at September 7’s Republican debate. When moderator Brian Williams began asking his question on Texas Governor and 2012 presidential candidate Rick Perry’s horrendous death penalty record, more than any other governor in modern times, he was interrupted by the applause of the audience.

Eventually allowed to continue, Williams asked, “Have you struggled to sleep at night with the idea that any one of those might have been innocent?”

Perry replied, “No sir, I have never struggled with that at all.”

Perry has no conscience. This response too was applauded.

Maybe what I always considered a disconnect between the Republican base and its party, allowing for their insanities, is really no disconnect at all; the Republican populous is convinced by the propaganda of Fox News and Rupert Murdoch. In a recent Fox report, they suggested we tax the Americans who are not taxed at all. The Americans who are barely able to survive upon their minimum wage salaries; those who work sixteen hour days. Still, to the Republicans and their propaganda distributing allies, taxing the rich is unthinkable. Fox News works. The Republican base, not so monetarily privileged themselves, actually believe the rich should not be taxed, which could raise the Republicans’ 1.4 trillion dollars in an instant. This scares me.

Is it possible that Rick Perry, frequently and frighteningly compared to George Bush, could really be elected? One would think the execution of 234 people, any number of whom could be innocent, one of whom was proved innocent, would be a scar on a political career. He was applauded for this. He refuses to accept global warming, citing conspiracies when 97% of scientists agree it is true. He even criticized the seventeenth amendment, which allows for direct election of our senators, instead of them being elected by other representatives, a further detriment to democracy that we fortunately removed.

He rejects same-sex marriage, and called social security  “a crumbling monument to the failure of the New Deal”.

The New Deal saved the United States from financial ruin. Perry, like his Republican colleagues, presumably wishes to balance the budget over and over again, as Hoover did in the 1930’s, expediting the market crash. Perry believes that the Israeli state, a stubborn dissident to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, a real source of weapons of mass destruction in the middle-east, was granted its statehood and therefore its right to illegally colonize Palestine by God.

Voters, please spare us from George Bush: four more years.