And using it against us. How can one otherwise explain a party that has, for years, run mediocre, wealthy, average-intellect white men for President? How can one otherwise explain the flukes that are Bachmann, Palin, Perry and Cain? How can one otherwise explain their embrace and financial support for the Tea Party? Because they know we can't help but mock them.
They know we're fueled by humor, by irony. They believe we take delight in feeling superior intellectually...and they play right to it by parading Bachmann and Palin and the TP in front of us daily. Stewart and Colbert bite. Main stream pundits and talk show hosts can't help themselves. Even Olbermann just now did a segement mocking Bachmann. I could go on and on and on speaking to the influential voices of both main stream and left leaining media that take time to mock them, make cartoons, video, etc.
But you know what I saw tonight? I saw Olbermann go from a segment about Bachmann to a clip of Romney, and the cringe factor in the room dropped. I wasn't as amused or concerned. It was involuntary, a relief almost to see the crazy level on the TV drop. Even Olbermann's tone dropped. I feel less threatened by Romney due to the pure insanity that are his Republican counterparts. And I firmly believe this is intentional, a grand chess move of sorts....a plan to lull the public into eventually finding some kind of sense of a collective sigh of relief when they finally start getting fully behind him and all of this Michelle/Palin/Perry/Tea Party can be forgotten. That very Tea Party the American public now associates Obama with, insofar as they managed to take him in and beat him with the recent debt ceiling drama.
The powers behind the right, the money behind the right.....they don't want to see a wild card in the White House any more than they went Obama there. But to pretend they want to is a smoke and mirrors game. They're expecting us, and rightly so, to be distracted by the shiny-scary thing that is Bachmann's crazy eyes. To focus on the Tea Party. It's a calculated move to eventually bring in someone who will look good on camera, speak softly and calmly, and appear to be more centrist than those we've all been distracted by for months. Someone firmly in the pockets of the top 1% who's main concern is taking care of them. They don't care to have a POTUS who prays for rain, doesn't believe in dinosaurs, hates gays, or who hates women. They want a business man they can control, and Romney is that man. And they know that by distracting Americans with the crazy, they can present a sane choice closer to primary time and he'll be a shoo in. And he may well beat Obama. He may well, after America has had their fill of extremist loony madness....when it's run into the ground, and they've manipulated a scenario where the fringe took Obama to his knees so that he looked just as weak as they do. Unless we stop worrying about these non-serious candidates who have no chance, we're in serious trouble when they decide to start rolling out the straight men to their slapstick.