GOP's fear of sex

This topic deserves more thought than I'm willing to give at the moment, but the recent admission by Deputy Secretary of State Randall Tobias to having taken advantages of services from a DC escort service highlights the puritanical streak that lies at the heart of so-called social conservatives.

As McClatchy reporter Matt Stearns points out, any sort of public vice is perfectly acceptable to BushCorp, but anything hinting of sex results in an immediate Apprentice moment.

Apparently, a penchant for massages is the one thing that President Bush cannot abide in an underling.

Arranging a massive pay raise and promotion for a girlfriend? World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz "ought to stay," Bush said. "He ought to be given a fair hearing."

Admittedly muffing management of the Justice Department, then forgetting key details when a miffed Congress demands answers? Attorney General Alberto Gonzales "increased my confidence in his ability to do the job," the president said.

The planning and execution of the Iraq war and its aftermath? Former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, former Coalition Provisional Authority administrator L. Paul Bremer and former CIA Director George Tenet kept their jobs long after their foul-ups became apparent. Bush awarded all three the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor.

But Deputy Secretary of State Randall Tobias, who quit the day he admitted to getting massages - and only massages - from an escort service?

"He resigned, and it was the proper thing to do," White House spokesman Tony Snow said Monday.

Thus is revealed the management philosophy of the CEO presidency. Favoritism, ineffectiveness and misleading Congress: OK. Massages: Not OK.

Republicans abhor abortion, ostensibly out of concern for zygotic life. But one has the distinct suspicion that what really irks GOPers is that women, having done the dirty deed, refuse to accept the consequences of their lack of chastity.

The evidence for this is quite simple, the same people who oppose abortion also oppose education on the best means of avoiding unwanted pregnancies in the first place: birth control.

Instead they call for abstinence education which anyone whose ever been a teenager can tell you was always doomed to failure, recent studies only bearing out the obvious.

Of course what drives Republicans truly crazy is the tension between their view of morality and their own personal human instincts.

From Newt Gingrich to Ted Haggard, from Mark Foley to Randall Tobias, Republicans, straight or gay, suffer the neuroses inherent to their closeted lives.