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The Day the Mad Dogs Took Over the Republican Party
It was a head-spinning day in Washington, yesterday was, as the story seemed to change from hour to hour in terms of who was proposing or accepting or refusing what and who seemed up and who seemed down. But through it all, one constant did not change and doesn’t seem likely to change: The Republicans are wrecking themselves.
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But the thing is this. People who have specific policy goals engage in negotiation. But these Republicans don’t have specific policy goals. They have what we might call emotional policy goals. They want to wipe Obamacare, and Obama’s desires on taxation, and the entire Obama record, really, from the face of the earth, like Pharoah wanted to wipe Moses’s name from the obelisks. They don’t even really know what they want to win, as Indiana GOP Congressman Martin Stutzman famously said last week. But if it humiliates Obama, it’s a win. Bad for the country? That doesn’t matter either. To them, by definition, if it’s bad for Obama, it’s good for the country. They actually think this.
And so, through a combination of a critical mass of anti-thought people in their caucus who won’t govern at all if it means seeing Obama come out OK, and a “leader†who can now plainly be called the weakest speaker since America became a country of consequence, the Republican Party has finally and fully succumbed to its cultural rage. It has used that rage mostly effectively for nigh on 50 years now, since Barry Goldwater. That rage has served it well on balance. It helped elect Nixon. It certainly helped elect Reagan, and even though it could be argued that once in office Reagan didn’t do that much to stoke it, he understood that he needed it to win, which is why he opened his 1980 campaign down in Mississippi, to say to his America that it was all right to resent black people, he understood you.
The rage kept the base galvanized. It kept the enemy, or enemies—liberal and the media, often one and the same—in the gun sights. But it could also be controlled, the way Reagan controlled it. And even Dubya controlled it. The rich didn’t really share the rage, or most of them. Even the Koch Brothers probably don’t, what with all the froufrou artsy-fartsy outfits up in New York they help sustain.
But all of them have used it. And they have tolerated it, the casual racism, the hatred of gay people, and the rest. They tolerated it because the booboisie voted the right way, and because they, the elites, remained in charge. Well, they’re not in charge now. The snarling dog they kept in a pen for decades has just escaped and bitten their hand off.
It was a head-spinning day in Washington, yesterday was, as the story seemed to change from hour to hour in terms of who was proposing or accepting or refusing what and who seemed up and who seemed down. But through it all, one constant did not change and doesn’t seem likely to change: The Republicans are wrecking themselves.
...
But the thing is this. People who have specific policy goals engage in negotiation. But these Republicans don’t have specific policy goals. They have what we might call emotional policy goals. They want to wipe Obamacare, and Obama’s desires on taxation, and the entire Obama record, really, from the face of the earth, like Pharoah wanted to wipe Moses’s name from the obelisks. They don’t even really know what they want to win, as Indiana GOP Congressman Martin Stutzman famously said last week. But if it humiliates Obama, it’s a win. Bad for the country? That doesn’t matter either. To them, by definition, if it’s bad for Obama, it’s good for the country. They actually think this.
And so, through a combination of a critical mass of anti-thought people in their caucus who won’t govern at all if it means seeing Obama come out OK, and a “leader†who can now plainly be called the weakest speaker since America became a country of consequence, the Republican Party has finally and fully succumbed to its cultural rage. It has used that rage mostly effectively for nigh on 50 years now, since Barry Goldwater. That rage has served it well on balance. It helped elect Nixon. It certainly helped elect Reagan, and even though it could be argued that once in office Reagan didn’t do that much to stoke it, he understood that he needed it to win, which is why he opened his 1980 campaign down in Mississippi, to say to his America that it was all right to resent black people, he understood you.
The rage kept the base galvanized. It kept the enemy, or enemies—liberal and the media, often one and the same—in the gun sights. But it could also be controlled, the way Reagan controlled it. And even Dubya controlled it. The rich didn’t really share the rage, or most of them. Even the Koch Brothers probably don’t, what with all the froufrou artsy-fartsy outfits up in New York they help sustain.
But all of them have used it. And they have tolerated it, the casual racism, the hatred of gay people, and the rest. They tolerated it because the booboisie voted the right way, and because they, the elites, remained in charge. Well, they’re not in charge now. The snarling dog they kept in a pen for decades has just escaped and bitten their hand off.
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