Fear and Self-Loathing on the Republican Campaign Trail

The paper's reporting on its latest New York Times/CBS News poll put its finger on Republican voters' problems without once connecting the two relevant, A-to-B dots. Whether that was intentional, or an oversight, or merely an instance of analysis-fatigue, I have no way of knowing.

But the dots were splattered prominently on the page. And when connected, they draw the linear conclusion that a vast bloc of Republican voters is wallowing in a rather nasty case of cognitive dissonance, brought on and exacerbated by guilt and self-loathing.

The first finding reconfirmed the already well known -- that "Republican voters across the country appear uninspired by their field of presidential candidates." There was little need for the subjunctive sense. They don't just "appear" to be uninspired; they unhesitatingly tell pollsters precisely that. In fact, that's what they told the Times/CBS News: "Not one of the Republican candidates is viewed favorably by even half the Republican electorate, the poll found."

With only three weeks to go to the Iowa caucuses, and after millions have been spent by candidates in their internecine propaganda war, that has got to be distressing for the players. Nevertheless the upshot has been a race not of inspiration, but attrition, which the Times alternatively describes as "fluidity." One candidate goes up, another goes down, then they bobble a bit more, but clearly not one of them is particularly liked by most.

But plopped down in the reporting on all this specific lack of inspiration and candidate preference were some macropolitical points that, being macro, indeed loomed large, and are essential to understanding the context of rank-and-file Republican indecisiveness.

The "nominating contests ... are approaching at a time of anxiety and uncertainty," reported the Times reporters, further demonstrating their knack for understatement. For instance "Americans, the poll found, think the economy is bad and getting worse" and "a vast majority think the country is heading in the wrong direction."

What's more, those polled "cite the Iraq war as the most important issue facing the country" and "a majority continue to say that undertaking the war was a mistake." Mixed into those results, of course, is a significant number of self-identified, and securely anonymous, Republicans.

But what's even worse for Republican candidates is the mood out there -- the one of "a decidedly negative view of Washington."

True, a large part of this negative view is reflected in the Democratic Congress' approval rating of only 21 percent -- "a potentially worrisome development for Democrats going into next year’s Congressional elections." But voters usually tend to like their own reps in Congress, as opposed to all the other morons screwing things up. So the "potentially worrisome" is less realistically worrisome along Congressional-election lines, plus it's doubtful, at best, that voters disaffected by this Democratic Congress would carry their disaffection over to a Democratic presidential candidate.

The killer for Republicans, however, is that "President Bush’s approval rating is at 28 percent, one point above the lowest of his tenure" -- and it's likely to skate nowhere but sideways or down.

Therefore, whom will voters finger as having singularly inflicted on us a piss-poor economy, as having singularly moved us in the wrong direction, as being singularly responsible for an idiotic war, and as having singularly converted the Republic's peace and prosperity of the 1990s into the 21-st century's rampant anxiety and uncertainty?

You got it.

Yet, to retain that highly motivated, primary-voter base of rabidly pro-Bush buffoons, Republican presidential candidates have been cornered into endorsing the very policies that even huge lumps of Republicans detest. They detest what they voted for originally, they detest what those votes brought about, and now they detest their own candidates -- Bush-lites all. The only Republican candidate who falls from this camp and therefore makes any sense at all is Ron Paul, and that's only because he isn't a doctrinal Republican.

Republican voters got badly burned by Bush, and they're terrified of a repeat performance. But so far their candidates haven't demonstrated much unwillingness to veer from such. Hence their voters know they're about to make another malignant mistake, but, being partisan Republicans, making mistakes is their political calling. There they stand; they can do no other. This time around, however, the stench is so bad, even they are bathed in the grossest of guilt and cognitive dissonance in doing so.

At any rate one hopes their consciences are capable of at least that much justifiable fear and self-loathing.

Comments

[Clemsy]

If the repubs were smart, they'd just hand the democrats the wholeball of wax. After all... there isn't a one of the democratic candidates who will be able to come anywhere near fixing this truly FUBAR situation.

Given that, by, say January 22nd, 2009, everyone will forget who was responsible, making it all the democrats fault.

There. They'll get to feel good about themselves again.

But they're not that smart, and neither are the democrats who should also think twice about just what they imagine they're going to do.

Any way you look at it, we're in it but deep.

[chanceny]

Perhaps that lack of voter enthusiasm and those ever tightening shackles to all things B.uS.h have brought them to their knees, and, once in that position, they have turned to god. I wonder, especially after their last debacle, (I meant to say debate but why not be precise), what other countries think about us. Evolution deniers, abortion abhorers, immigrant fear mongering fence-builders, and crazy christians demanding church/state boundaries be gone or the foul spread of secularism will destroy the christian America our forefathers actually meant to say but forgot to write into our Constitution. Ghouliani, the 9/11 fearless (but clueless)authoritarian cowboy, Willard Mitt Romney-bot with mormon sized flip-floppin baggage, Fred B-Actor Thompson, who seems to suffer from inertia, Mc/Cain/Cave, who gets all dizzy trying to remember who's ass to kiss daily, and, of course the Tancredo/Hunter duet preaching their white supremecy doctrine ad nauseum, and, just when you thought that would more than suffice, along comes Kooky Keyes. Nuff said cause once he opens his blowhole - the jig is up. Ron Paul seems sane, till you give a good look, then the weirdness factor of his vision for no government regulation at all pops up and unmasks his wackadoodleness. Used to be that any American could dream of becoming president cause this great nation was open to all. But, these bubbleheads? Not exactly the bunch you'd tag to govern or wish to see on the world stage, representing our country. So sad. So...sorry!

[KitCarson]

I can't understand how anyone who has a basic idea of what Republican policies have done to the nation, to the Constiution, and to each of us, could ever vote Republican. They truly want to make our government disappear. They want to sell it off, privatize everything, put a price on what belongs to all of us. MacDonalds at the Grand Canyon, what is left of our national forests and the water we drink and the air we breathe.

[Realist]

KitCarson is on the right track above, but stops short of the logical conclusion.

The Republicans want to return to the fabled Antebellum Southern Ideal of a landed gentry that survives comfortably on the labor of "inferior" beings. In other words, they want to revive the Confederacy and all it stood for. They believe that wealth bestows righteous power, and anything we rich want to do is blessed by the Lord while anything you poor want to do is the work of Satan.

[beamer]

your title brings up fond memorys of the dearly departed Doctor of journalism-hunter s. thompson..Oh, that he were here to rip the nuts off a few nasty brutes&greedheads... past time to raise the level of Gonzo..it has indeed got wierd enuff for me.