Thomas Edsall has a splendid overview of the far right's centripetal navel-gazing, which has of late bolted from a sinking despair to a dizzying, blues-begone mania.
Thank you, Mr. Ryan.
Here, for example, is a pre-Ryan, National Review suicide note:
Romney’s insipid message does not rise to the challenge this nation faces. Maybe the milquetoast pantywaist candy-assed soft-focus "Believe in America" shtick will prove sufficient under a relentless barrage of nakedly thuggish attack ads designed to Barry Goldwater the guy. But John Podhoretz, editor of Commentary, thinks not: 'This is a race he should be able to win,' he wrote, 'so if he loses, it won’t be because Obama won it. It will be because he lost it.' "
But now, a triumphant Weekly Standard declares:
Mitt Romney, the cautious candidate, wary of being specific, and counting on the bad economy to defeat President Obama – forget all that! The Romney who picked Paul Ryan as his vice presidential running mate is an entirely different person. He’s prepared to take the fight to Obama on the biggest bundle of issues – spending, debt, the deficit, taxes, entitlements, and the reversing of America’s accelerating decline under Obama. Specifics? There will be plenty.
Thus the Romney-Ryan ticket is less a national campaign than a fascinating case study in group psychosis. It's also a bookend, or the other shoe.
The National Review referenced Barry Goldwater--the '64 Ryan model which Bill Buckley & Friends were editorially just wild about. Goldwater conducted a campaign in close accord with Buckley's preexisting command to stand athwart history and yell "Stop!" A still-grieving yet optimistic electorate handed Goldwater his head. Yet he had managed (in part reluctantly) to unleash the snarling hounds of hypersimplistic libertarianism, liberalism-as-domestic-communism, hateful fundamentalism, medieval Catholicism, cultural militarism and pretty much every other variety of right-wing ideological charlatanism imaginable.
Presto, in a predominantly white, blue-collar, low-informational nation of Southernized sentiments we were cursed with infectious New Rightism, Reaganism, Gingrichism and W.-ism and now Ryanism.
But that party is over. They don't know it--"[Romney-Ryan is] prepared to take the fight to Obama on the biggest bundle of issues"! yelps a vertiginous Fred Barnes--but it is. Why? Because unlike the late '70s, we've now more than three decades of right-winging, supply-siding decay to view backward: the right's promises were a catastrophic bust. What's more, we're looking backward from a rising pool of off-white demographics, which the nativist right, incomprehensibly, has made no attempt to woo.
In sum, we're watching the last pathetic gasps of a radically mutated, progressively deformed Goldwaterism. And on the night of November 6th, we'll hear not so much a Romney concession speech as a plunk. There will remain abundant streams of resistance, of course, running down the Appalachians and seeping throughout the South. And the happy delusionists will doubtless keep paddling till 2016. But it's over. For them it's over. It's effectively all over--the end of an era of ravaging psychosis.
"But it's over. For them it's over. It's effectively all over--the end of an era of ravaging psychosis."
There you go, P.M., making me hopeful again!
Posted by: Ansel M. | August 13, 2012 at 10:28 AM
I confess to having thesis envy for thirty years. Reaganism was a simple proposition, "Do you want to pay less taxes?" I also confess to saying "yes" when no one was watching. Let's face it, we all want to pay less taxes.
But I also have the progressive/liberal/socialist cursee of seeing nuance and am therefore driven to explain them to others. "If only the ignorant masses 'in the middle' would only take my free one-week course on political nuance, they would see things my way."
Now, I quote PM's quote:
He’s prepared to take the fight to Obama on the biggest bundle of issues – spending, debt, the deficit, taxes, entitlements, and the reversing of America’s accelerating decline under Obama. Specifics? There will be plenty.
I am pretty sure that Team Obama's response will be a fairly simple proposition, such as, "Do you want them to put their government hands on Medicare?"
My only concern is that a couple million "persuadable voters" in what used to be swing states will take the free, one-week course in budgetary nuance, as hosted by former congressman Paul Ryan. what do you want to bet that there will be an on-line version available by September?
Posted by: Robert Lipscomb | August 13, 2012 at 10:37 AM
I hope you are right, PM but I take nothing for granted. But you have been right in the past, as I will never forget a post you wrote on November 22, 2004 after the (re)election of George the Lesser. I hope you're right again this time.
Posted by: AnneJ | August 13, 2012 at 10:46 AM
I hope you are right too, but about 1/3 of the electorate is as deranged as the GOP, thanks in large part to Fox "News" and talk radio, and another 1/3 are what you call "low information voters," many who watch and listen to the aforementioned noise machines, and will take what they say at face value.
8.3% unemployment is enough to make Romney look like an attractive alternative. But I sure hope you're right. The GOP is ten times as deranged as it was during the Cheney years (lets face it, he was the real president, right?) and they scare the bejabbers out of me!
Posted by: thecommodore | August 13, 2012 at 11:47 AM
I also hope you're right, but am pretty sure you're not, as regards the imminent death throes of diseased Goldwater/Reaganism.
No matter how many times that selfish, phony ideology is discredited, it rises from the ashes stronger than before (in political terms) and unleashes a new round of destruction on our national welfare and body politic.
With unemployment as high as it is (we know who's to blame for that, but too many voters don't), I can't see Obama winning a dominating enough landslide to force the GOP into rethinking anything. They'll find some scapegoat for the loss and comfort themselves, again, that conservatism didn't fail - it was failed by the candidates selling it. As they always do when they lose.
If the 2006 and 2008 wipeouts weren't enough to draw the poison from the GOP, I don't see a narrower, if still solid, Obama victory in 2012 doing the trick either.
Posted by: Turgidson | August 13, 2012 at 12:29 PM
I am very worried.
Look at that voter suppression mess.
In my lifetime I would like to see the body politic come to its senses--but it gets worse.
We have a formidable, cunning foe that will stop at nothing.
Posted by: Francine | August 13, 2012 at 06:03 PM
Unfortunately Mr Goldwater underwent Pharonic ideological embalming and as long as his crusty old political corpse endures so will the ideology. I am not as sanguine as you about the outcome. My personal belief is that the very concept of government is probably humanity's greatest achievement. Everything we have done derives from our ability to organize. The poisonous idea that government is evil, that it is corrupt, that it serves only the needs of a few insiders infects the left just as much as the right. I see this every day in blog posts. it is how the cool kids on the left show they "get it" unlike your regular peons. And what does it get you? Apathy, disinterest and low voter turnout.
Posted by: Peter G | August 14, 2012 at 07:58 AM