Romney proved to be the stealth candidate exemplar. After running hard right in the Tea Party dominated primaries, picking a TP running mate, and continuing to be pretty darn conservative for weeks after the convention, he suddenly went Etch-A-Sketch centrist in the debates (with such a straight face that he came across as the psychopath he may well be click here), flummoxing Obama in the first one (knowing that the demographics ensured his reelection is another possible reason Obama did not pay due attention to his initial debate performance). By the last TV contest Romney had evolved into Mr. Dove who could hardly agree more with the foreign policy of the man he wanted to replace.
Fortunately for the Democrats, hard-line Republicans can keep their true wants and intents in check only so much and or so long. Many right wing candidates and especially office holders believe in their theories and doctrines so ardently, and live in conservobubbles that prevent them from realizing that most think their opinions creepy to scary, that at some point they cannot help torpedoing themselves by saying or doing something that reveals their actual desires and designs.
So we had Todd Akin, bless him, casually telling the world that because women who are really raped rarely if ever get pregnant banning all abortions is not a problem for women of true virtue (click here). Followed by Richard Mourdock who allowed that sure, raped women do get pregnant, but it is a gift from God so banning abortions is not a problem for women of true faith -- and those who are not. The two guys ended whatever chances the GOP had of gaining the Senate while helping alert the nation that a major chunk of the right holds views of women inherited from the Victorians and shared to some extent with the Taliban. This when two thirds of Americans consider nonadulterous nonmarital sex acceptable, and even more do it. Also giving the nation a better idea of what many on the right really think was serial divorce Rush Limbaugh who denounced the all American Sandra Fluke for being a slut for daring to defend the contraceptives most Americans support the use of in front of a congressional panel. Meanwhile Grand Old Party governors and state legislatures have been passing a host of regulations to hinder access to abortion when most voters think Democrats handle the abortion issue than Republicans. So
Social security and Medicare remain the thirds rails that give those naà ¯ve enough to touch them a nasty electoral shock -- one that Romney got when he selected the known privatizer Ryan for his running mate and tossed away
And most Americans gasp in eye rolling revulsion at how much of the right actually takes seriously the fringe socioeconomics contained in bad novels like Atlas Shrugged. We have an entire nation to run here, it's not a college bull session on arm chair philosophical economics (click here). It is not surprising that most Americans being middle class favor the moderate-progressive policies that favor their cohort over the 1%. Only ideologues believe that that the 99% can be remade to be so ardently pro-upper crust that they want to bend over backwards to give the rich all the breaks on the speculation that that the aptly named trickle down scheme works (in mirror of the communist dream of remaking men into egalitarians). The possibility that the
But the biggest exposure of all political time of what the Repub upper crust really thinks was Mitt's being caught at waving away about half of the nation as income tax free moochers not to be considered worthy of his class's attention -- never mind that much of his class does all it can to minimize their taxes by one means or another. Much but not all of the right has been trying to explain away the statement, but it is clear enough. It is not so much that Romney may believe what he said, or was pandering to his elite donors, what is important is that the truth is out and can never be effectively denied. The deceit that it is the liberal elites that for some reason have it in for the ordinary American has been permanently counterbalanced by the now well documented knowledge that a lot of the "job makers" are in it for themselves, and create jobs only by accident if then (click here). The
The beauty of all this is how the Republican-turn-off-the-American-majority-machine is the gift that will never stop giving the electoral edge to the Democrats. There will always be plenty of right wing Republicans who cannot keep themselves from saying or legislating what they think and want. This used to be the Democrat's problem, in that the liberal wing had so much influence on the party that it turned off the American center in the 70s and 80s, until the
That brings us to the under appreciated irony of how FoxNews is damaging the Republican brand without really trying. Superficially it seems that FN -- which gets a bigger audience than centrist CNN and progressive MSNBC combined -- is the best thing to happen to the GOP since Reagan. So much so that it is often called the media organ of the party. But this is grossly incorrect. FN could be the mouthpiece of the GOP only if the latter directly controlled its content and operations. But the owner and operator is Rupert Murdoch, a man of immense wealth and influence and desire for more wealth and influence who never does what he is told by others. To him FN is a cash cow that has the nice side effect of allowing him to push his conservatism across the land. The Roger Ailes who often gets blamed for what's on Fox is merely Murdoch's employee whose job depends upon doing what the latter wants. So FN is about what Rupert desires, not what the Republican establishment such as it is needs. Things are so out of control for the GOP that FN is to a great extent setting the agenda for the Grand Old Party, rather than the reverse as it should be for the long term prospects of the party. So Republicans who try to go centrist are sure to be shot down by the FN pundits and correspondents who, along with their talk radio allies led by Rush, can turn the fury of millions of listeners against the compromising deviants. The result is that the party is even less able to undergo the moderating reform it needs to get more of the minority and centrist vote. It does not help when on 9/7 a stricken FoxNews Bill O'Reilly and company go on to further slander the 47% now 51% of the country as Democratic voting slackers. By doing that they tacitly acknowledge that they have lost the country. Limbaugh and Coulter have explicitly said so (with Coulter noting that the loss was not attributable to Romney's mistakes). He and she are correct.
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