The stench of loser on Romney has always been there but the Tea Party is still stinkin it up for Republicans everywhere, every day. The beltway douchery made a lot of noises about the GOP taking a long hard look at itself and making changes and becoming electable again but for many of us this narrative didn't ring true then and has been proven false now. The reason for this is blindingly obvious: The Tea Party and the politicians they champion hue away from Logic and Reason, not towards it.
[@iSenseChange on the Twitter Machine]
Believe it or not, there are some tenants of Republican conservatism that are intellectually (if not morally) defensible. For everything else there are outright lies and distortions and never ever explaining yourself or in fact being held accountable in any way shape or form. Mitt Romney’s strategy for becoming president of the United States of America rested on little else than this. And apparently it's all you need to do to stay popular with the Tea Party nutters that rule, almost entirely, the Republican Party of 2013.
Republicans got elected in 2010 because people were mad (though a misdirected madness primarily due to the facts of their existence imposed upon them by the disastrous Bush presidency) and Republicans were going to create jobs, jobs JOBS. Of course none of that happened and how could it? More jobs would have reflected well upon a President Republicans hated and had never been more afraid of. Swept in with the fever for jobs and a better economy was a fever of a different kind, a frothing, barking mad kind of fever and thus the Tea Party staked its claim on its own party and the country at large. Logic and Reason would never be the same.
The Tea Party was fine when they stayed within the lines, unified with the rest of the party in the darkest of racial hatred and ideological fearmongering against a fairly centrist President and yes, a Black man. But they got elected and (as in the wholly manufactured Debt Ceiling Debacle) almost immediately started breaking things. And ultimately made it so difficult for a sane, thinking, rational Republican politician (they did at one point exist) to get his or herself elected or reelected. Anybody that wants a shot at getting anywhere in American right wing had to first sign or make all sorts of unreasonable commitments and promises and say godawful hideous things to further mollify this godawful hideous crowd until what gets left at the bottom of the filter is a politician even meaner than the next one, like Evolution in reverse.
And there you are, Republicans. You did it to yourselves. Romney ended up being your man (my spell-checker just auto-corrected ‘Romney’ to ‘Money’. Truth is stranger than fiction and occasionally even politics) and nobody anywhere could say they were enthused about it in even a small way. Romney couldn’t win for a number of reasons, not the least of which is because he had to pick a VP that would somehow bring him closer to this shark pit and further away from everybody else in a General Election.
"Learn nothing! We lost because Romney wasn't conservative enough! And Obama cheated! And...ALIENS!!!"
What we've seen so far is that those sanest of Republicans can wish and dream for whatever they want but the Tea Party holds the reins and won't be giving them back any time soon. The whole party quakes in fear against an increasingly ridiculous Rand Paul (which blows me away, absolutely blows me away), an increasingly bombastic Ted Cruz and an increasingly stretched Marco Rubio. The old canard about inmates and asylums has never been more apropos. A Frankenstein's monster reference is not out of line either. And I see no fix for it on the horizon.
All of which, all things being equal (which of course they are not), should bode well for Democrats but will it? How've they done so far?
@iSenseChange
[Pissed I didn't include the Koch Brothers in the poll. How'd I miss that?]