And the Beat Goes on--- Rush Limbaugh,Dick Cheney, Newt Gingrich,Karl Rove, Glenn Beck,Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, Pat Buchanan, Ann Coulter, et al. Some are more blatant like those named above and others unnamed. Some hide in the shadows, more stealthy and less obvious as their language is designed to shield them and somehow attempt to convince us they are not like their brethren. All of them have one powerful emotion in common -- FEAR. But of what are they really afraid? Barack Obama, their loss of control of the US Congress, their eventual loss of their advantage in the US Supreme Court, or simply their loss of power generally? I think the answer to that goes much deeper. What I believe these people are really afraid of is explained below the fold.
Throughout this country's political history we have seen the use of negative campaigning in all it's forms grow over time. From the early part of our history in the campaigns against Andrew Jackson and others,to fears raised about the religion of John Kennedy, to the present day campaign of hatred waged against Barack Obama, the growth of these tactics have ebbed and flowed. Over time the negative campaigning has sometimes been less onerous and sleazy and at other times full of such vitriol, hatred, and outright lies to sicken the american people and make us wonder if those who would utter such garbage are so power hungry that they would say anything to win. Much has been written about this topic. Many are the discussions led by the talking heads of 24 hour cable news as they dissect the topic to it's molecular level and explore every nuance either back to the beginning of the Universe or forward into some unknown but scary future. I think the important thing to understand is
that the Republican party uses negative campaining both as a tactic, but over the last few decades it has also become their one and only strategy.
They have learned to play the political game and have been successful due to their reliance on both this tactic and underlying strategy. Remember when we were young and we learned to play a game successfully because we felt like we had it all figured out and we would win. This simple concept is what has caused the non-elected republican mouthpieces above to go into total verbal overload. They belive that since they are not in elected office that they can say anthing and get away with it. Some would say they are doing this to excite the base. Certainly this appears on the surface to be their intention. I believe they have a much more substantial problem that this verbal shit storm is designed to hide.
Their real fear is that some Elected Republicans might turn away from their campaign of hatred, fear, bigotry, predjudice, and character assassination and decide that they can no longer hold their noses and utter such outright garbage as they realize the American people are no longer willing to be manipulated in this crass way. The two camps of Republicans have two seperate and distinct fears to deal with. Those in elected office will shortly see that the same tired triumvirate of lower taxes for the wealthy, spending cuts that only serve their supporters, and deregulation that only serves their supporters are no longer going to be accepted as new and useful ideas. In short, this camp has few ideas of any worth to put forward and campaign on.
The republicans listed at the beginning are scared out of their wits by the reality of their situation. They know that they have virtualy nothing to contribute of a positive nature and so they fall back on tried and true methods. Their fear is that they won't be able to convince the elected republicans to tread water with them in the little cesspool they live in. What would happen to these ego maniacs if they lost their ability to affect the opinions of the American people? The worst fate they can imagine -- they become irrelevant.
We need to be very careful of these people since they are now backed into a kind of killing ground from which they see only one path of escape. Their rhetoric will only get more outrageous as they get more and more desperate. What is hard to know is how we need to approach this situation. On the surface we can sit back and simply watch them totally implode, but there is a distinct danger in just doing that . As these people get more desperate they may make statements such as those made by Glenn Beck to the effect that americans who believe as he does simply need not pay their taxes. One thing none of us need is some arrogant idiot yelling "fire" in our country and those ignorant enough to believe him reacting in a destructive way. If you have the answer to this problem you are more intelligent than I am.