The right unravels

Depression, despair, demoralization, palsied neurasthenia and now an acute goofiness beyond any known diagnostic framework are but a few of the delightful afflictions savaging the once-triumphalist right. These lads are quitters; they are whiners and apologists and self-pitying losers; they are, in a word, what Nixon so aptly, disdainfully called candy-asses.

Consecutive national conventions producing a stagnant slump and then a bit of a bump and the blogospheric right slides into an epic funk. It seems they can only get a grip when don't need to. If these boys had been in charge during the Battle of the Bulge, today we'd all be speaking with an Alsatian accent. I've just never seen anything quite like it: the instant resignation; the all-is-lost panic; the damn, this-thing's-over, we're-doomed bleating and sobbing; and worst of all, the indecent excuse-making.  

Power Line's John Hinderaker, for example, suspects that Mitt Romney is going down only because perhaps "the country is closer to the point of no return than most of us believed." And by that he means what right wingers have been brooding over as a Done Deal since the New Deal: the dreaded welfare state has finally bribed enough voters to keep itself afloat in perpetuity. (Irony of ironies, Republicans created the American welfare state and entrenched themselves politically with ever-expanding Civil War veterans pensions.)

However, continues Hinderaker (and you just had to know this was coming, if not from Hinderaker himself, surely from someone's incurable addiction to the "just one more" dipsomania of right-wing extremism):

At National Review, Andy McCarthy poses the same question--why isn’t this election a landslide?--and posits a somewhat different explanation. Andy faults today’s Republicans for not being principled enough, or conservative enough [italics mine].

As I wrote yesterday, conservatism is simply no longer a coherent political philosophy. It's just a loose federation of fanatics--wholly discredited supply-siders; slavish Hayekians; Calvinists and medievalists and Swaggarting thumpers; indefatigable racists; anti-science and anti-intellect obscurantists; and now we should add, just plain candy-asses.

Comments

[Susan Zoon]

They have no clear narrative. You are correct, P.M.- what happened to the vaunted message discipline?

I just get this crazy image of Romney as George of The Jungle, just swinging through the trees- grabbing any available vine for a lifeline and careening directly into a tree trunk.

And while I greatly enjoy seeing this apparent melt-down, I am chilled by the apparent calm that led this candidate to toddle off to his boat for another vacation directly following the RNC. It makes me think that the fix is in and there is no way he can loose. I mean- all that Koch money... and the line from Richard III, "Can I do all this and NOT get a crown?'

[Emile]

I ask the question also: Why do the conservatives keep winning? Why isn't the election a landslide?

I think it has to do with news media who are no longer interested in reporting facts.

[Peter G]

I've been thinking a lot about this lately in the light of my perusals of the right wing blogs. While they mostly maintain an assured confidence in victory and the rightness of their cause one already sees quote a lot of leakage. If they lose it will be because they did not select an authentic conservative as their candidate. It looks like we will all have to wait for next presidential election cycle and the selection of that true conservative candidate to reach the breaking point for the Republican party. I wonder who it could possibly be? All those candidates who didn't want to go head to head against Obama and are all waiting for the fever in their party to break are in for a shock. Ebola fever seldom breaks. So any republican who hopes to seize the ring in 2016 is going to have the same problem as Mitt. Only worse.

[Frank Sinclair]

Conservatives today are just a bunch of dittoheads. Parroting Rush, Hannity, Beck, or each other, having given up original objective thinking long ago.

[NickT]

http://2012.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/09/mitt-romney-obamacare.php?ref=fpa

Mitt Romney said Sunday that he likes parts of ‘Obamacare’ and will keep key provisions involving pre-existing conditions and young people. “I’m not getting rid of all of health care reform. Of course there are a number of things that I like in health care reform that I’m going to put in place,” he said on NBC’s “Meet The Press. “One is to make sure that those with pre-existing conditions can get coverage. Two is to assure that the marketplace allows for individuals to have policies that cover their family up to whatever age they might like.”

Looks like at least one prominent conservative has decided to join the evil liberal tyranny!

[SueMe]

NickT: Whomever called Romney a "windsock" was right. Looks like Mitt has read some polls showing many Americans like provisions of "Obamacare"!

[Robert Lipscomb]

"It gets better."

P.S. Is there any such thing as a wind-sock-puppet?

[priscianus jr]

SueMe,
Where you said "Whomever", you should have said "Whoever", because it's the subject of the sentence, therefore nominative case. You use "Whomever" only when it is a direct or indirect object.

[majii]

As I see it, the major problem the republicans have is that they refuse to accept that their policies are failures, and that they've been failures for over 30 years now. They also don't realize that the more intransigent they become, the more out of step they appear to be in the 21st Century. They may not be aware of it, but the GOP is close to the point where they must make a choice to either change their policies or take their first steps on the road to extinction. They've purged the party of moderates, allowed the religious extremists to take over, invited the racists in, and shouted, "Let's all party like it's 1850!"

[nathkatun7]

NickT and Robert Lipscomb: Mitt has already walked back his MTP position. Check out the statement from his campaign spokesman clarifying that Mitt was not advocating government requirement that insurers must cover those with pre-existing conditions, or allow young people under 26 years to remain on their parent's health insurance. Rather, he thinks that the market place competition, and not the government, will take care of people with pre-existing conditions, and will allow young people under 26 to be covered under their parents insurance. Then there was the statement by his running mate, Paul Ryan, who categorically said that Romney will repeal all of the Obama Care.

As far as I am concerned, I still have no clue about Mitt Romney's health care position.