Tuesday, 13 November 2012

A week later, the GOP still in denial


Tuesday evening, half past six.

Exactly a week ago, Republicans were chilling the champagne in the clubhouse, waiting for Indiana and Kentucky to come up first and start Romney on his unstoppable march to 270, with $25,000 worth of fireworks ready to be fired at Romney headquarters after the inevitable win. Romney didn’t even prepare a concession speech.

And then….the Republicans are still not sure what happened next. Obama wins, even in Florida, we have a gay Senator, gay marriage, legal pot. Nightmare!

So it’s a week later, and I put on my hazmat suit and visited the conservative part of the internet, to see if the Republicans have finally figured out that America really, really doesn’t like them.

Um, no. They are still stuck in the Denial Vortex and haven’t managed to Elizabeth-Kubler-Ross their way to the next stage. So far, their excuses for losing are as follows.

First, immorality! The big guns like this one best. Rush is whining about food stamps, amnesty for criminals, emasculated men, pop culture leading America into the gutter. O’Reilly moans about drugs, abortion, homosexuality, handouts for moochers. Breitbart bellows that we won the cold war but the communists won the peace. They are really giving their code-word manual a workout:

Food stamps = black

Amnesty = brown

Abortion = women

Mooching Socialist = Democrat

…and traditional = white. The real Americans! The moral ones!

Next, Obama cheated! Several outlets are hollering that the “inner city” stole the election: Fox, Hannity, Rush, Breitbart, World Net Daily. Philadelphia is a key target for baseless accusations of voter fraud, the continuing subtext being that the black vote is somehow illegitimate. Even their vice presidential  candidate is muttering about the “urban vote”. All those dog whistles were causing a serious ringing in my inner ear.

Next, our tactics sucked! Hannity and Rush grumble that Obama’s dirty campaign of lies worked too well and the GOP blew the race by trusting Romney, Rove and guys like Akin to campaign competently. Because there’s no way Obama could win an honest election.

Next, Rush and Sean insist that conservatism didn’t lose, we should ignore minorities and go further to the right. And some of their more hysterical allies want to secede. But never, ever give in. As Mitch McConnell made clear, they equate compromising with Democrats, with negotiating with terrorists. Because anyone who disagrees with them is The Enemy.

Next, Benghazi! For four long years the wingnuts have searched in vain for a bona fide Obama scandal. They fell on their faces with the birth certificate and Eric Holder. Now conservatives are ignoring the one big news story, the fiscal cliff, in favor of the other big one, the Benghazi-Petraeus Vortex, because it’s their one big chance to use “Obama!” and “Illicit sex!” in the same sweat-dripping headlines. Fox, Drudge, Newsmax, everyone is on this, not only because of “Obama!” and “Sex!” but because it allows them to keep up the pretense that they are covering a real news story that sane grownups are also reporting. Three horny men, two horny women, dead diplomats, and Obama! Who will play them in the Lifetime movie??

So, there’s the answer from the right. “We didn’t really lose! Obama ran a dirty campaign and rounded up the votes of the 47 percent of America who are degenerate moochers, and our tactics weren’t up to snuff! We just need to be more conservative and attack Obama even more!” A few of their saner leaders are mumbling about negotiating on immigration, but they are being drowned out.

As I said earlier, they didn’t get the message on election day. They will need to be hit in the head again and again until they get it.

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