Paranoia on parade

Here we go again.

Politico:

Romney is portraying himself as the victim of the liberal media and secular culture, and some social conservatives who opposed him in the GOP primary are rallying around him [italics mine].

Mitt Romney last week, to Fox News:

"I know the president likes to attack fellow Americans. He’s always looking for a scapegoat."

Romney, to Breitbart.com, again, last week:

"There will be an effort by the quote, vast left-wing conspiracy, to work together to put out their message and attack me."

Back to Politico:

Romney’s advisers privately admit that it’s helpful for their candidate to be seen, particularly by social conservatives, as a victim of the media and culture, but cautioned that it’s not the candidate’s personal style to be as overt in that way as Santorum and Gingrich.

Richard Hofstadter:

"Paranoid"--"no other word adequately evokes the sense of heated exaggeration, suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy."

Poor Mitt. There's one exposure he has genuine cause to be paranoid about--his Mormon faith--yet he can't be overtly, heatedly, fantastically paranoid about it, because the actual bogeymen come from his own political ranks: right-wing Christian fundamentalists, who themselves are intensely paranoid about pretty much everything and everybody. 

Hence in the GOP presidential nomination we'll witness a deep paranoia operating inside an even deeper paranoia--the only question being, Whose is whose and which is which?

Comments

[janicket]

Paranoia strikes deep
Into your life it will creep
Starts when you're always afraid
Step out of line, the men come
To take you away

[robert Lipscomb]

I really think this meme has run its course outside the right wing third of the country.

Romney is about the worst person to choose to play "poor pitiful me".