Poor deluded wretches, they just don’t get it.
After it became clear that the Obama was going to win all the swing states, I started looking at Redstate.com, just to gloat. I never look at that site because mostly it makes me ill.
Poor bastards really believed they were going to win, that all the polls were wrong, that it was going to be a landslide for their guy because how could any rational person vote for Obama. That’s what you get for relying on Fox News and choosing to reject reality. I read last night and then heard this morning over and over again these conservatives trying to understand why they lost.
Jump with me over the magic orange time vortex into crazy land.
The Bain Effect
Erickson places a lot of blame on the super PACs, stating that they basically ripped off their donors to line their own pockets.
Um, yes. But that’s exactly what Bain did, what the investment banks that caused the financial meltdown did, and how Romney made his fortune. So why are they surprised? All Citizens United did, apparently, was to move some money from billionaires to those running the super PACs. Maybe the 1% will be more careful with their money next time. They would have been better off just paying more in taxes. Then at least they would have better roads, faster internet, and a healthier and better educated workforce, instead of countless hours of crappy TV commericals.
How to Sell Snake Oil
Almost all of these conservative analyists now recognize that the GOP brand of crazy didn’t sell to women, younger voters, and minorities because, sadly, there just enough dumb old white men anymore. Some blame Mitt for not explaining why the conservative vision is best for the nation. And he didn’t. Because it’s not. Maybe Mitt knew this. Maybe not. He’s an Etch-a-Sketch.
Tuesday night was a wake up call, but I think they’re going to hit the snooze button and try to go back into the dream to dream up some answers. I listened to some guy on NPR struggling with how could the GOP reach out to Latinos and women because there just aren’t enough old white guys anymore.
But then they all backtrack, heading back into their fantasy world. It must have been a rejection of Mitt personally because conservatism does appeal, just look at how we hung on to the House. Well, d’uh. The GOP held on to the gains from 2010 because they gerrymandered the hell out of congressional and state house districts in blue states like Pennsylvania. (Note to next DNC chair: Call Howard Dean about how to organize the party to win back the state houses. And a shout out to Colleen Lachowicz, a longtime Kossack, who won her race for the Maine State Senate against a first term tea party slime mold.)
Sex, Lies and Bigots
The reality is conservativism is about two things only. The first is rabid opposition to abortion (and now, for some crazy reason — Catholic bishops — birth control) and marriage equality. Why on earth would a party which makes this a major part of it’s platform, think it can appeal to women or to young voters? Crazy. But, they think, perhaps this is where they should be able to make inroads with Latinos because they’re all Catholics.
Earth calling nutjobs, you are losing Latinos because your base loves the racist anti-immigration laws of Arizona and other red states. When American citizens whose families have been living here forever can be pulled over and threatened with deportation if they don’t show their papers, well, that’s not going to win anyone. When your party opposes the Dream Act, you lose. But on purely social issues, Catholism is not a monolith. The Catholic bishops in the US are the creepiest bunch of old white guys ever, but in many places in Latin America, the Catholic clergy stood up for the poor against the right wing death squads while preaching liberation theology from the pulpit and in some cases, were martyred.
Bottom line, the GOP base are bigots. Sure they have the Rubio and Allen West, but when a featured Latina businesswomen speaking at the GOP convention is shouted down, you have a base of bigots.
However, the social agenda is non-negotiable, not even as we all learned this election season, in cases of rape. So that’s a fail.
Money
The other leg of the two legged stool that is conservatism is the protection and preservation of wealth. As far as I can tell the GOP today is rightwing evangelicals, deluded tea party nuts, and those who talk about austerity for everyone else so they don’t have to pay taxes because big govmit is bad.
First the tea party. For the most part, from what I can tell, these people watch FoxNews, reality TV, and don’t know how to spell but believe firmly that someday they will own a plumbing company that propels them into the 1% and they don’t want to have to taxes to give the lazy brown people food stamps. Oh and, guns. So they’re just batshit insane. And bigots. And stupid, like Otto from “A Fish Called Wanda.”
Moving on we’re left with the small government deficit hawks. What do they really believe? All the talk about deficits is a smoke screen, I think, a way of sounding like wise parent who telling the children that they can’t have the new PlayStation (read social safety net, plus infrastructure, education or healthcare) because we must live within our means (read “I don’t want to pay for it”), and we mustn’t saddle our grandchildren with mountains of debt (unless it’s from unnecessary wars).
But actually it’s about greed. They worship Milton Friedman and tell us all over and over that private enterprise does a better job than government. So deregulation and privatization are the keys to economic prosperity. Except they aren’t. Allowing private testing companies and for-profit charter schools to essentially take over public education isn’t working. Private prisons are recipes for abuse. Oh and Wall Street, 2008. The wealthy get richer and the rest of us get poorer. Essentially, their vision of government is medieval: protect the property and wealth of the wealthiest from the rabble while taxing us to pay for their wars.
Climate Change
Climate change is the kicker that’s going to change everything. If we are going to survive the coming climate apocalypse where Sandy is new norm, we need government to work and to work well. The GOP is dying. One climate writer I read recently predicted that best case scenario, one half of the species on earth will become extinct in the coming decades due to climate change. I predict the GOP will be one of the first.
