On the evidentiary basis of Romney's "me-too-ism," Dionne declares that the far right has already "lost the election of 2012." Mitt has heaved "virtually all of his past positions overboard"--that is, his past right-wing positions, not his past moderate positions or his past center-left positions--in a desperate scramble to appease Middle America. And while Romney's abrupt ideological apostasy (which is every bit as meaningless as his original conversion, one should add) has drawn the media's attention toward his jarring political tactics, Dionne wishes to redirect that attention:
What should engage us more is that a movement that won the 2010 elections with a bang is trying to triumph just two years later on the basis of a whimper.
That Romney has moved to the center is of course indisputable, and I would agree with Dionne that a comparative analysis of the ideological right of 2010 and the tactically less radical right (on the public relations-presidential level) of 2012 is a worthy one. However it seems to me that what should engage us even more is the American electorate's horrifying willingness to entertain, to any degree, the malevolent mindset of the manifest madness that so recently brought us unprovoked war, exponential debt, ravaging unemployment, and a financial crisis to rival 1929.
In short, Are we nuts? Do we genuinely believe that Romney's 17 Bushie neocons among his 24 foreign policy advisers have suddenly taken a sober view of American firepower? Or that Romney's supply-sided fantasies--whose budget-busting ramifications represent the Gipper and W. squared--would, this time, somehow prove that three is the economically miraculous charm?
What's more, far right movements almost always moderate prior to popular elections. See? We're not so radical, they say. Hear us. Trust us. On occasion, rather innocent electorates do just that, to their later shock and profoundest regret. Yet in this instance we already possess empirical knowledge of the right's enduring contempt for the working classes and its global recklessness. And that knowledge is far from ancient; it was only four years ago that these virtually selfsame bungling incompetents and chest-pounding chickenhawks and deliberate class warriors brought us to our knees. Four years, people. Just four years ago.
And it's already time, maybe, to give them another shot, because this time they swear they're actually quite nice and very pleasant sorta-quasi-extremists? I ask again: Are we nuts?
Yes.
Posted by: dr.e | October 25, 2012 at 07:53 AM
Yes probably a good portion of us are. It boggles the mind that the race is this close. Maybe, just maybe the dumbass republican who said pregnancy from rape is god's will, will scare enough of the electorate to think twice about the party. I seem to remember Rick Santorum holding a lead at one point near the end of the primaries until he spouted his anti-woman anti-gay crap, the poor man really can't help himself and I think many in his party are the same. We shall see.
Posted by: AnneJ | October 25, 2012 at 08:13 AM
I think Powell put it nicely in his endorsement of Obama. Basically, it came down to "You can't trust Romney to be who he has been in the debates."
He also, basically, eviscerated the whole current Republican Party when he said that he considers himself a moderate Republican, a vanishing breed.
Posted by: japa21 | October 25, 2012 at 09:05 AM
Let's not forget one thing:
Obama's national polling numbers are, no doubt, significantly depressed by his *shockingly* low level of support among Southern whites, which no amount of purportedly blind African-American tribalism -- fucking Colin Powell! get off the plantation! -- is capable of rectifying.
So, my apologia for America: We aren't so much "NUTS" as we are repugnantly, irreducibly, and quite unrepentantly racist.
Posted by: Chad | October 25, 2012 at 09:27 AM
Colin Powell is NOT FORGIVEN. Wilkerson told him that the "evidence" he was to present to the UN was shit and Powell has since admitted that he KNEW it was shit, but he presented it anyway. Had he walked away and thrown down for what he believed was the truth... that there were no WMD's, he might have been President himself. He might have stopped and unjust and criminal war. Instead, he allowed the war to go forward, weighted by his endoresement of NEOCON lies in his UN testimony.
So, he's a hero for endorsing Obama?... NOT FORGIVEN. Good riddance to the "vanishing breed"
They have been selling us down to river to the military industrial complex and the corporatists for fifty years.
Posted by: Susan Zoon | October 25, 2012 at 09:57 AM
When our political class has turned "bipolar manic", there is little hope for the rest of us as they inflict themselves on us.
Posted by: BobH | October 25, 2012 at 01:41 PM