[I did a quick search of dKos for references to "the base" and Al-Qaeda and couldn't find any previous dairies that explicitly link the two. If this has been broached before, my sincere apologies.]
I was just reading Ron Chusid's Liberal Values blog which has a story about the civil war erupting amongst the Republican rump. The story refers to a call to arms at RedState for an Operation Leper against ex-McCain campaign staff who speak ill of Sarah the Moose-Slayer.
I was struck by a reference to "the base" of the Republican party. I've heard and read the term many times, but for some reason this time I connected it with Al-Qaeda.
See below for my two-pence worth about the link between them...
I wonder if the "intellectuals" of the Republican rump realize that the "The Base" is Al-Qaeda as Al-Qaeda is quite literally the base, and while they would never admit an equivalence, the vaunting of ideological purity over practical concerns for human welfare which is really a perversion of their professed faith makes these extremists fellow-travellers in my view of the world.
While I am an Australian, I do understand that many/most/nearly all in the US would find drawing a parallel between Al-Qaeda and "the base" to be offensive, but for this I do not apologize. I feel that both are rooted in a blinkered (bigoted) worldview wrapped up in theological hokum, with the result being an extreme intolerance of "otherness" that leads to violence, threatened or actual. I find both offensive.
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Shooting off at a tangent, I thought John McCain's concession speech was the finest thing I have ever seen him do and despite the fabled narrative surrounding his POW experience, his concession speech was truly a more important contribution to his nation.