From the Department of Electioneering

The 2012 Class of GOP Candidates are for the most part currently stumping through New Hampshire and Iowa, either auditioning for or on hiatus from their Fox News pulpits, hawking their latest ghostwritten "book" and competing over who can have the ugliest race-baiting moment (oh, wait, on that one we have a winner, it's Mike "we didn't have no madrassas in Arkansas" Huckabee!). Occasionally they'll stop draping themselves in down-home cornpone to put forth a thesis, and according to Politico, it's this:

...the very issues that have typically energized GOP primary voters — such as abortion, faith, gay marriage, debt, military power — are being subsumed into a larger debate about a country in decline.

It’s the idea, held by many conservative activists, that America is becoming too European — weak, feckless and faithless — a spendthrift nation in hock to China and led by an irresolute president who is accelerating the process, either by design or effect.

Let's see:

• Ever-increasing anti-intellectualism and ignorance of history
• Neverending loss of open land to suburban sprawl
• Politicians who score points by degrading public broadcasting and public transit
• Tax policies that burden the poor and line the pockets of the wealthy
• Rampant childhood obesity
• Insanely expensive and inefficient health-care system
• Unquestioning worship of military might

Yep, sounds like Europe to us.