Oh, God.
By Paul Ryan, among many others, is evidently dismayed that the 2012 Democratic Party platform has performed a third-trimester abortion on Baby Jesus, whereas the GOP platform has been cleverly inscribed on a tortilla miraculously bearing the toasted image of the Virgin Mary.
For shits, I devoted a needlessly long chunk of time this morning reviewing the archive of party platforms available through the invaluable American Presidency Project, and — well — here you go:
A few observations:
- The 2012 GOP platform is a total outlier, presumably designed to intimidate the Saracen hordes biding their time for Obama’s re-election.
- Judging entirely by the text of its platforms — for by their words, or works, or whatever, ye shall know them — the party clearly had no use for God from its founding through the 1960s. By my sophisticated calculations, the godlessness of the Republicans from 1856-1956 likely accounts for the successful passage of 93 percent of Progressive Era legislation and 97 percent of the New Deal.
- I have new-found, albeit limited, appreciation for the Nixon-era GOP.
- How did Reagan manage to win in 1980 with 66 percent less Jeebus than 1976?
- How did Bush manage to win in 2000 with 75 percent less Jeebus than 1996?
- I don’t know what that weird green dash is to the right of the graph, but fuck it! I made a graph!
UPDATE: Here’s another meaningless graph: