This morning, on CNN's "State of the Union," Michele Bachmann candidly and accurately summarized her party's collective transcendence of Ronald Reagan's sunny, can-do optimism:
There is no future, there is no hope with President Obama having a second term.
Where does one go from there? When apocalyptic finality becomes your party's core message, nothing else matters -- everything hinges on that singular potential.
What should we do about taxes, entitlements, energy independence, as well as nuclear proliferation and the South Pacific and Afghanistan? Such questions are insignificant, in fact they're immaterial. Because, remember? With a two-term Obama -- which there will be -- there is no hope, no future. It's all over. It's all over; there's no point in discriminating between the little all-overs and the big all-overs. It is all, all of it, over. There's to be no hope. And no future.
And it can't get any uniformly bleaker than that.
When the doom fails to materialize, as it will, the uninebriated, majority portion of the 2016 electorate will pause to watch Joe Biden's presidential campaign ads. He'll need only one: that one clip, from 2012, when Michele Bachmann appeared on CNN's "State of the Union" to summarize her party's self-dooming transcendence of Ronald Reagan's optimism -- that under a reelected Obama, there will be no future.
During the Depression and WWII, under a democratic president it was "We have nothing to fear but fear itself". Under republicans since at least 2004, it's been "Be afraid, be very afraid". One was a president trying to keep everyone calm during harsh economic and frightening foreign policy times. The other is about being afraid of things like consenting adults of the same gender entering into the legal contract of marriage and women having control over their own bodies. The only thing I'm afraid of is these cretins getting control of the government and turning this country into Jesus, Inc. Yes, I'm fairly confident Obama will win a second term, but as I have said before and will say again, I refuse to take anything for granted.
Posted by: AnneJ. | February 19, 2012 at 03:31 PM
No future? Hmm...
Republican platform courtesy of The Sex Pistols.
Posted by: Diana F. | February 19, 2012 at 05:51 PM
One of Michele Bachmann's favorite themes, the power of a "last stand" is that it excuses any crime and demands every sacrifice. The problem is that she has been holding this rhetorical last stand since before Obama was president. Her entire career has apparently taken place at the precipice of American history.
Posted by: Matt Osborne (@OsborneInk) | February 19, 2012 at 06:52 PM
As with Newt's assertion that Obama is the most dangerous threat extent one has to ask: dangerous to who? With regard to Bachmann's lament one asks whose hopes are due to be dashed. Certainly not mine.
Posted by: Peter G | February 19, 2012 at 08:26 PM
https://twitter.com/#!/ppppolls/status/171425770378506241
Posted by: Robert Lipscomb | February 20, 2012 at 08:03 AM