It’s quite dispiriting to write a blog, particularly about things that matter, when the available media is so maniacally obsessed with things that, well, don’t. So successful have the Republicans been in creating their post-reality “empire” that even those few in the media who know better are constantly reduced to anointing, say, Newt Gingrich, as a potential nominee, that is when they’re not worrying about whether Christmas is in some sort of danger, fretting that the Muppets might be Commies, and allowing that Teddy Roosevelt was maybe a little like Hitler. Nothing uttered by a Republican, no matter how preposterous, is felt to be undeserving of Equal Time, whether it’s Gingrich promising to appoint JOHN BOLTON as his Secretary of State, Rick Santorum claiming to know something about sex, or Rick Perry, well, opening his mouth.
I’m getting progressively more annoyed by this dreadful reality each day. It’s one thing that our media stars are dumb and/or craven enough to sit respectfully nodding at such perfect nonsense passing for political discourse, but it’s quite another to think anyone watching with two brain cells to rub together is playing along. It’s insulting, frankly, that every day we are forced to listen to the ravings of utter lunatics competing to out-crazy each other, knowing full well that today’s top clown will fall out of the car just as clumsily as yesterday’s, and for the same entirely predictable reasons. The fact that a substantial portion of Americans have been rendered dumber than posts by decades of increasingly febrile Republican propaganda campaigns does not make their addled beliefs somehow worthy of discussion; the real, more interesting story is how this was allowed to happen, and it’s told each time we open a newspaper or turn on the TV.
It’s a bit different situation for Democrats, though, especially on those rare occasions that they actually act like Democrats. When the President points out the previously undisputed fact that job growth was worse under the Bush tax rates than under Clinton’s, he gets a sneering “3 Pinnochios” from the WaPoo’s ironically named “fact-checkers,” despite, well, the numbers. Another ironically named outfit, Politifact, called Democrat’s claims that Paul Ryan’s health plan would end Medicare “the lie of the year,” which in itself seems rather grandiose given the competition, but Ryan’s Plan does end Medicare. Kind of a big fail if you ask me, unless they intend their name to be ironic. Maybe they do; kind of like Herman Cain calling himself a “Presidential Candidate.” Whatever the rubes believe…
Meanwhile, in the increasingly unpleasant Real World, the big money Republicans hardly have anything to be so fraudulently worked up about. Despite Obama’s recent, substance-free nods to something the credulous call “populism,” there is nothing to be gained, and a lot to be lost, by handing the reins of government over to any of the nincompoops running as Republicans in 2012. They’re doing a fine job of giving Obama cover to govern to the right of Reagan, and he hasn’t disappointed. Whereas, the crazy stuff coming out of the Republican Clown Car is so wantonly destructive that it could start to affect the portfolio, even as it’s already direly exacerbated the Servant Problem in Arizona and Alabama.
Republicans have been, it seems, a little too successful in encouraging Americans to believe utter horseshit. Too successful to realistically mount a Presidential campaign, anyway. Nonetheless, President Obama’s ironically named Secretary of Health just today defied the FDA and banned girls younger than 17 from getting emergency contraception without a prescription. With “enemies” like these, the Right has found, to its everlasting delight, it longer needs friends; think of the money they’ll save not bothering to elect one.
