re: #65 moderatelyradicalliberal

With the exception of John Huntsman, the entire slate of GOP candidates are sorry excuses for presidential contenders and it’s all of the GOP’s own damn fault. They are not they problem they are a symptom of the problem. The GOP base is crazy and so their candidates are crazy or have to try to pretend to be crazy. The GOP establishment has stoked, encouraged and exploited the fears, resentments and bigotries of their voters for 30 years and now they have a base that can’t be appealed to without using fear, resentment and bigotry. A candidate who can do that will win over the base and lose everybody else.

A candidate who can’t will lose the base and thus lose the election even if they can appeal to people outside of the base. Newt, Bachmann, Paul, Santorum, Cain Gingrich and Perry could never win a general election because they are perfect embodiments of the modern GOP. It’s all there for everyone to see. They are not outliers. They are well within the mainstream of Republican thinking on most issues. Romney and Huntsman would lose because they can’t fake the crazy well enough to turn on the GOP base. They are not really members of the tribe and the base knows it.

We saw this in 2008. John McCain could barely fill up an audience for his campaign stops before he added crazy in the form of Sarah Palin to the ticket. The base came out, but when most people got a good look at the crazy, they wanted no part of it. This is the monster that the National Review types created. It’s theirs and they own it. They want the base to hide the crazy, but why would the base hide what the National Review types have told them was perfectly fine? Ann Coulter is doing radio ads for Romney after saying he would lose a general election. She’s been encouraging the rabid crazy in the GOP for fun and profit for years now. Now she wants them to be sensible.

Ann is full of shit. Karl Rove is full of shit. The National Review is full of shit. David Frum is full of shit. They are all full of shit. They want their most loyal voters to STFD and STFU and do what they are told after encouraging beliefs and attitudes that make rationality impossible. They are reaping what they sowed.

(for the paragraph police)

That’s a really succinct post. Well played, sir.