Poll: Cuomo’s lead over Paladino widens
“Democratic gubernatorial candidate Andrew Cuomo has opened up a 37 percentage-point lead over Republican rival Carl Paladino, according to a Siena College poll today.”
It would appear that “crazy” and “angry” are not unconditional sales points for the electorate. I think Paladino will find, looking back at the shambles of a campaign, that his anger and craziness were too personalized, and not framed in terms of religious manifest destiny and denial of the constitution’s framers’ intent. That, after all, is the Palinistas recipe for success: haul God to their side, portray opponents as Godless Scientists, identify the “Finger of God” in the drafting of the Constitution, and further portray the Godless Scientists as by definition unpatriotic.
This works because on one hand, people are confused and worried by the complex global economy and are experiencing a dizzying loss of control over their destinies. On the other hand, the general public is woefully uneducated when it comes to science and civics. The Fringe Right’s answer to this is to further undermine education in this country, and fill people’s heads with nonsense designed to strengthen populism and ultimately make control of the electorate easier. If history does indeed follow the path described by Santayana, we might expect a resurgence or rebirth of Marxist or Marxist-like political theories demanding that the electorate free itself from the mind control of the ruling class.
File under: Palinistas understand that uneducated people are easier to control than educated ones. And it is all about control and access to the public trough.