This is over at my other two blogs. It is a (hopeful) deconstruction of the GOP "base". Time and again they refer to their under $5 million dollar constituency as the "base". But what does that really signify to those who make more than that? Bush described them as the "Have's"but it was better to be in the "Have More" constituency Bushes "Base" same word, two entirely different meanings. For Bush, the "Base" was his Foundation of Power.
Let's look at the Dictionary meaning of how the GOP uses the word to denote the everyday Republican. You know, the ones who would like to have a beer with Bush? The hard-working single mother with a kid or two, the parents who need help with their disabled child. The people who "don't have the time" to really think about bigger pictures, because the picture of their lives are fading like a forty year old Polaroid.
An interesting phrase. The base. What does it mean? The base. To the GOP, the
BASE
Function: adjective
Etymology: Middle English bas, from Anglo-French, from Late Latin bassus fat, short, low
Date: 14th century
1 archaic : of little height
2 obsolete : low in place or position
3 obsolete : bass
4 archaic : baseborn
5 a: resembling a villein : servile (a base tenant) b: held by villenage (base tenure)
6 a: being of comparatively low value and having relatively inferior properties (as lack of resistance to corrosion) (a base metal such as iron) — compare noble b: containing a larger than usual proportion of base metals (base silver denarii)7 a: lacking or indicating the lack of higher qualities of mind or spirit : ignoble b: lacking higher values : degrading (a drab base way of life)
— base·ly adverb
— base·ness noun
synonyms base, low, vile mean deserving of contempt because of the absence of higher values. base stresses the ignoble and may suggest cruelty, treachery, greed, or grossness (base motives). low may connote crafty cunning, vulgarity, or immorality and regularly implies an outraging of one's sense of decency or propriety (refused to listen to such low talk). vile, the strongest of these words, tends to suggest disgusting depravity or filth (a vile remark).
That is what the Right thinks of their own. This is why they Gov. Palin was chosen. To fire the imaginations of the "base" to let them "dream" of becoming Something, when they will always be Nothing.
For the Republican Base, Palin Pick Is Energizing
By Alec MacGillis
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, September 8, 2008; A01
NORFOLK -- Bill and Sandra Goode were so worried that John McCain might pick a running mate who favored abortion rights that Bill called McCain's presidential campaign headquarters to warn against it. They prayed. And when the Republican senator picked Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, whom they had barely heard of but knew to be staunchly antiabortion, Sandra Goode said, "we knew our prayers had been answered."