Peter Z. Scheer at Truthdig finds the reaction of the crowd at the Republican debates to Rick Perry's boast about his atrocious death-penalty record as chilling as Michael Sean Winters does: Scheer says that the "most disturbing moment" in the debates was when "the crowd at the Reagan Library debate erupted in joyous whistles and applause for the Texan" after Perry said he sleeps just fine though he has presided over the execution of more people than any other modern governor in the U.S.
Texas has now executed 234 people since Perry became the state's governor.
It will be interesting to see how the "pro-life" and pro-Republican U.S. Catholic bishops handle this matter, if Perry is the Republican candidate for president. Will the head of the U.S. Catholic bishops' conference Timothy Dolan write a love letter to the Republicans praising their pro-life policies akin to the one he wrote Paul Ryan this past May, gently chiding him for his anti-poor libertarian economic tax policies?
Will the bishops go on touting the Republican party as the pro-life party deserving Catholic votes, while slamming the Democrats as anti-life, if Perry and Obama are the two presidential candidates in 2012? Turning the record of a governor who has put 234 people to death into a pro-life record is going to be no mean feat, if the bishops do plan to continue down the path they've been on for some years now, as they seek to turn the American Catholic church into a political machine for the Republican party.
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