I wonder how many of our readers saw last night’s discussion with Republican pollster Frank Luntz, a commentary that was absorbing enough so that I was able to watch FOX for more than thirty seconds. The Republicans who had come to the debate in Iowa were thrilled by the thumping, warlike rhetoric of Rudy and his clones but from all accounts were outraged by Ron Paul’s defeatism. The party loyalists who were interviewed seemed to revere W, and several of them expressed the hope that the next Republican presidential candidate would also talk about “values” and prescription drugs. I came away from my encounter with these Middle American Republicans utterly loathing them. Their consciousness works as a kind of blotting paper through which neocon verbiage passes on the way to becoming popular opinion. I am in fact developing a relative degree of respect for the neocon propagandists, after learning something about the recipients of their bad ideas. I pray to Heaven that this collection of zombies whom I saw and heard last night do not represent the vast majority of Republican voters across the country.