The "Quirky" Umempathetic Non-Imagination of the GOP

Matt Yglesis on the Republican stance that programs worth funding don't exist unless they're personally affected:

It’s the failure of moral imagination. What it reminds me of, more than anything else, was Sarah Palin talking about her desire to protect programs for special needs children from budget cuts. Afterall, Palin has a special needs child herself. So she sympathizes with children who need extra help and the families that support them. She sees their needs and wants to fight for them. Meanwhile, Reps Grimm and Hayworth see the needs of families burdened by Hurricane Irene. They sympathize and want to fight for them. But what if Rep Hayworth had a son with Down’s Syndrome? Or what if Palin’s best friend lived in a storm-devastated Staten Island district? Their worldviews, it seems, would pivot on an axis.

Or, as a certain raconteur whirling dervish with a dick the size of a clown shoe who has a six-inch tongue and can breathe out of his ears wrote HERE, why nothing will move on global warming until some Republican's kid in Iowa gets eaten by a polar bear .