The spotlight is on Iowa this week. First we have Rep. Steve King being utterly bizarre about immigrants before accusing his opponent, Christie Vilsack, of trying to create a "macaca moment." Awesome. I guess even paranoids have real enemies, eh Steve?

But really, all of that was just the pre-game show for the rollout of the Iowa Republican Party proposed platform, which is so completely bizarre it is only worthy of a man like Steve King. Here are some highlights:

• 18 separate anti-abortion planks: Everything from the personhood amendment to a 3-day waiting period with ultrasound at the woman's expense before an abortion can be performed which may not be paid for with state funds and in the case of an underage girl, must require parental consent before her ladyparts may be touched by any doctor to statistical reporting of all abortions to the state to banning Planned Parenthood and RU-486.
• Bizarre federal budget restrictions - Yes, a demand for an immediate $1 trillion reduction to the budget but that reduction will not be from the defense budget, bans on spending to build bike paths, but only a 10% salary cut to Congresscritters who actually fail to balance the budget.
• Free passes to all businesses in all things!
• Prison reforms! These include making inmates work for their room and board (in the fields, perhaps?), reinstating the death penalty and juror nullification.
• Free markets for education! Because you know, those education free markets? They're just what the country needs to make sure Republicans remain in power because the electorate is too stupid to know what they've done to the country. Also? Just say no to compulsory preschool. Can't have the kiddies learn to read too awfully early. (They haven't privatized preschool yet?)

There is more. Much, much more. But I want to highlight this little gem, buried in the section under "Elections."

We believe candidates for President of the United States must show proof of being a “natural born citizen” as required by Article II, Section I of the Constitution -- beginning with the 2012 election..

Wanna bet Steve King put that little race-laced nugget in there? Yep, that's right, they're still going after President Obama as a foreign-born, exotic black guy. Who can be surprised?

RadioIowa.com has more:

The chairman of the Iowa Republican Party’s platform committee says the group is intentionally questioning President Obama’s citizenship with the wording in one section of the document. It calls for presidential candidates to “show proof of being a ‘natural born citizen’ of the United States.”

Don Racheter, chairman of the Iowa GOP’s 2012 platform committee, spoke with Radio Iowa by phone this afternoon.

“There are many Republicans who feel that Barack Obama is not a ‘natural born citizen’ because his father was not an American when he was born and, therefore, feel that according to the Constitution he’s not qualified to be president, should not have been allowed to be elected by the Electoral College or even nominated by the Democratic Party in 2008, so this is an election year. It’s a shot at him,” Racheter said.

You don't say? Really? I wonder how pathetic one has to be to be an Iowa Republican. Over at Daily Kos, MinistryofTruth has some thoughts:

In all seriousness, these people are nucking futs and are totally incapable of governing. This is what happens when Fox News and the Right Wing Noise Machine reduces a large portion of the population to a level of idiocy where they are allowed to believe in every anti-government conspiracy theory you could imagine for the sake of motivating low information voters to vote out of fear of scary, scary Un-American things like whatever Fox was covering last night. This isn't a party platform to be taken seriously, it is more like crib notes from the last 6 months of the Glenn Beck show. The lunatics are truly in charge of the asylum in the Iowa GOP, because this doesn't read like a serious list of policy preferences, it reads like the paranoid and insular delusions of an absolute crackpot, because that is what the modern GOP is, a place where delusional conspiracy theorists, haters, bigots, plutocrats and know-nothings hang out and where moderates are not allowed, you are either barking at the moon crazy or you aren't pure enough to be a conservative now-a-days. This paranoid and delusional pathetic excuse for a preliminary GOP Iowa party platform stands as proof of that.

Here's the truly sad part of this whole stupid document. It isn't an aberration. I fully expect every state to adopt a similar platform by the time this ridiculous joke of a party gets around to their nominating convention this summer. This document is what the Republican party has become. It isn't pretty, but it's real.