The right's last stand: the fetal position

You know it's all over when the only ones left to shoot are the messengers.

Mitt Romney, who has ferociously hewed to assaults on Obama's economy through the rather unorthodox strategy of blathering about welfare checks and Medicare's destruction and embassy cables, has expired his list of geopolitical foes; his frenemies are abandoning the yacht in self-preserving horror; those eight-or-nine-or-so battleground states' 36 undecided voters have finally decided; and flush Democrats' weightiest decision is now that of choosing between a cheeky Krug Clos d'Ambonnay and the more serviceable Dom Perignon '66--but they must order soon, well before January 20th, because supplies are limited.

Yes, it's all over, they're all gone, except the messengers. Ergo the desperate right-winging press is having a nostalgic field day in its pressed desperation: Romney is toast, his friends are traitors, Dems are too deliriously happy to care anymore--so what greater, more splendid opportunity to attack the "uninhibitedly" as well as "implicitly liberal media"?

The Wall Street Journal's editorial page kicks things off with "Romney Offends the Pundits"--a somewhat brooding (isn't it fun?), self-explanatory screed about "the press corps [being] offended by [a foreign policy] debate." But no one can embarrass himself and his self-righteous cause like the NY Post's neoconningly demented John Podhoretz. In "The media lash out," he scrawls:

Apparently, it is the view of much of the mainstream media and foreign-policy establishment that discussing these horrific events in the course of the presidential campaign is monstrous.

Podhoretz will of course never "get it," because, simply, he's immensely uninterested in getting it. As neoconservatives are by now unastoundingly wont to do, he begins by distorting the original criticism--that Romney's timing was indecorous and even appalling--into a fraud of injured virtue: Is it really wrong for Romney to want to "discuss" foreign policy? In the course of a presidential campaign?

And facts? Well, screw the facts. On-the-ground facts don't matter. Nietzsche matters, but not facts.

Dear WSJ and Mr. Podhoretz: You may have noticed that fewer and fewer volk seem to be listening to you these days; and it could be, it just could be, that they, after 30+ years of your warring, inequality-exploding bullshit, have had enough.

Comments

[Jim Milstein]

PM, I want to commend you for your use of "uninterested" to describe the uninteresting Podhoretz in this post.

Keep up the good work!

[Peter G]

Indeed. And for those of you interested in further clinical examples of this form of hysteria one can stop by the Bedlam that is Eric Ericson's Red State blog. In these modern times it costs not a penny to view the inmates and in deference to human dignity the inmates are no longer restrained. At all. The inescapable Romney March to Victory, like that of Xerxes, has been forestalled by The 500. Or so Eric The Enraged informs me.

[Robert Lipscomb]

I believe we are all missing the real story, that of Fonzie Romney blazing apth to a new political philosphy. I think it should be dubbed "post-neo-conservatism", one based less on Burke and more on Liberace.

I was wondering what "the Fonz" can do to take it to the next level, yet remain true to his 70's values. But it would also need to reaffirm his manhood.

Then, it hit me like a thunderbolt.

Streaking!

Maybe even streak the vice presidential debates ... to the song, "YMCA" ... in a Tea Party hat ... the No Apologies Tour.

Hell, I would join THAT post-neo-conservative party.

[majii]

Fox is working overtime to convince its viewers that the protests that are spreading through the Middle East because of the anti-Islam video is a definite sign of President Obama's weak foreign policy. The voices are shrill and filled with anger, and the network's news entertainers are hosting an endless stream of their own to hammer home the point that PBO is a failure and one of the reasons is because he started the Arab Spring. I kid you not. John McCain, who anointed Romney early on, has been on every network today in an attempt to deflect blame from Romney for his own cluelessness and to project it onto the president. I'm not clelebrating a win just yet, but I am enjoying the desperation at Fox and the frustration of those on the right like Podhertz and Erickson. I've also noticed the silence of many of the RW supporters' voices on Twitter and on Facebook. I think they're in shock. Oh, well, they ignored all of the warnings that we've given them about republican politicians' lousy policies for the last 30+ years, and the quickly closing distance between their parachute of lies and the earth of truth has to be scaring the sh*t out of them as they discover that everything they believed was a GOP fantasy.