My two favorite people in the world of media, Rachel Maddow and New Yorker writer, Frank Rich, came together on Maddow's show yesterday for the purpose of discussing Michele Bachmann's decision not to run for re-election to congress.
Rachel's point, which Mr. Rich supported, was that in spite of Bachmann's penchant for either misstating facts or making them up out of whole cloth, issuing statements so breathtaking in their stupidity, you weren't sure you heard her correctly, and irresponsibly hurling unfounded allegations of venality or treason against anyone she disagreed with, she was a star with the people she cared about; the lunatic base of the Republican party. They cited her win of the Iowa straw poll in the last presidential Republican primary, her fundraising prowess and her consistent ability to command coverage from right-wing media outlets as evidence of her effectiveness as a politician. They prognosticated that while she was leaving the stage, there were certainly a number of other equally bombastic, factually challenged Republican legislators eagerly waiting to take her place.
I have to say that I was right there with them up to this point and then the conversation took a wierd and unexpected turn. Both Maddow and Rich appeared to lament the fact that there are no Democrats in congress who demonstrate the kind of Bachmann star-power and cuckoo entertainment value that is the hallmark of so many tea party elected officials. They went on to speculate about the reasons for this deficiency in the Democratic party and I'm not sure, but I think after positing a few unlikely theories, concluded that the problem was that in spite of their long association with Hollywood, Democrats lack a sense of humor.
While normally I would hesitate to ever disagree with either Rachel Maddow or Frank Rich, it's kind of impossible to ignore a discussion that so completely misses the boat. Michele Bachmann, Louie Gohmert, Steve King, Virginia Foxx, Steve Stockman and Ted Cruz don't say the off-the-wall, intolerant and ignorant things they do because they're wild and wacky legislators, they say them because they're ideologically driven and with the exception of Cruz, they're not very bright. The people they represent and appeal to share their ideology and their lack of intelligence. Cruz actually knows better but he's just mean and manipulative.
Am I accusing the Republican base of being dumb? Yes, but don't worry they're not insulted. In fact they take pride in their ignorance, bragging that it makes them "real Americans" as opposed to the effete, intellectual snobs who make up the Democratic party. The reason we don't have Democrat counterparts to extreme Republicans is not because we lack a sense of humor, it's that we abhor and fear stupidity and any Dem candidate running for office who spouted the kind of mind-numbing garbage that regularly comes out of Bachmann's, Gohmert's, and company's mouths wouldn't be elected dog catcher, let alone a member of congress.
Just look at the last Presidential election. The primary debates couldn't have been more stark in their contrast or illustrative of my point. On one hand, you had a party whose candidates looked and sounded as if they had just escaped from a circus clown car. No position was too extreme, no conspiracy too farfetched, no journey from the truth too long to travel and no expression of intolerance too beyond the pale. Why? Because the Republican base wouldn't have accepted anything less. Ideology is everything, real ideas and thoughtful discussion are anathema to the tea party faithful, and they treat it with the contempt it deserves. That's why Tim Pawlenty and John Huntsman were booted early from the competition, but Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain and Rick Santorum, God love them, were carried forward. In the end, the disappointed base was forced to accept the less conspicuously crazy, Mitt Romney, but not before he had fully adopted and made his own the worst of their fact-free based ideology.
On the other side, you had the Democratic debate with contenders who to a man/woman displayed a complete and total grasp of the issues and facts, and whether you agreed with them or not, the ability to formulate plans and solutions to the problems facing this country. Even our fringe candidates, Dennis Kucinich and Mike Gravel articulated cogent and coherent positions that sometimes strayed from mainstream party thinking, but never strayed to another galaxy. Watching the Democrats debate was an embarrassment of riches while watching the Republicans do the same thing was just an embarrassment.
And unfortunately for the country, the "stupid-and-proud-of-it" contingency of the
Republican party is now the dominant contingency. Their elected representatives have no qualms about appearing on television or in congress and sharing, for the record, any idiotic notion that comes into their befuddled brains. They know that the constituency who elected them will celebrate their fiery rhetoric and loony assertions, truth and logic be damned.
Sadly for Rachel Maddow and Frank Rich, the Democrats don't have that luxury. If one of our elected officials got up in public and said that the IRS was collecting data to prevent the American public from getting healthcare, or that the Obama administration was buying up all the ammunition in the country in order to get rid of the 2nd Amendment, we'd run him or her out of town on a rail.