Romney quits. Big money Republicans must be tearing their hair out right now, and Rush Limbaugh must be thinking about putting a gun in his mouth. I mean, seriously. All these powerful, elite people who are used to writing a few checks to various PACs and bundlers and 527s to express their will as regards the results of any significant election... will now have to cozy up to the one Republican they hate the most, because he's the one Republican who helped author the only substantial campaign finance reform legislation to become law since 1974. (It's crappy law, mind you, that doesn't really accomplish anything worthwhile or have any real effect, but, still, it's the principle of the thing. McCain did something to slightly inconvenience the wealthy players in our political apparatus, and they have never, ever forgiven him for it.)
And now they have to dance with the rat bastard. Ah, karma is sweet, sometimes.
That shitheap Limbaugh is an especially humiliating position. He's done everything except lead a lynch mob armed with pots of boiling tar and bags of feathers against Big John, and now he's going to have to climb on board the Straight Talk Express, too.
At this point, the only real alternatives these people have are Huckabee and Paul. I suppose they could decide to pour a lot of money into either of those campaigns, and maybe it would make a difference... but Huckabee seems to be what Bush only claimed to be, a genuinely compassionate conservative Christian who, for all his backwoods provincial ignorance, genuinely wants to see tax dollars spent to help the poor. I can only imagine how wealthy, powerful conservatives must shudder at that concept.
As for Ron Paul, well, to the wealthy conservative elite he's a fucking lunatic, straight up; the only guy running on the Republican ticket who has said right out loud that the minute after he finishes taking the Oath of Office, all our troops stationed in foreign lands are on the first plane home, and American foreign investments can look after themselves. You can't imagine anyone with a few million or billion bucks tied up in Middle Eastern redevelopment, or petroleum stocks, being happy about that prospect, either.
So it's McCain's way or the highway for all these pricks.
I have no doubt they'll all come around to embracing the new reality pretty goddam quickly; if there is one thing conservatives and Republicans both excel at, it is turning every single thing they claim to believe in 180 degrees the minute it suits them to do so. And Limbaugh can rely on his particular market share to honestly forget he ever said a word against McCain the instant he starts praising the guy instead. After all, every single Dittohead in the world seems to have had no trouble accepting the... hrm... unusual, shall we say... premise that every junkie in the world should be locked up forever or simply executed, just like Rush says... except, of course, for Rush himself, whose little excursion into oxycontin addiction was a completely forgivable, and apparently entirely forgettable, mistake.
I'm going to predict that within one week's time, every conservative pundit that has been bewailing McCain's campaign as 'the death of the Republican party' or some such horseshit (Ann Coulter actually went on TV and said if McCain is the Republican nominee, she will campaign for Hillary Clinton!) will be fully on board, and all we'll be hearing rolling out of Rush, or Michael Savage, or Ann Coulter, or Michelle Malkin, or any of those retards, will be "McCain, glorious McCain, war veteran McCain, patriot McCain, straight talking McCain, McCain, the Great Man Who Will Lead America Back To Greatness!"
And I will laugh, and laugh, and laugh.
And hope they all burst a few blood vessels every time they do it, too.
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So this Boy Scout, couldn't have been older than eleven, is holding up this kinda chubby looking Scotch Pine. It was.... ehhhh... okay...
Rush Limbaugh must be thinking about putting a gun in his mouth.
ReplyDeleteWe can only hope...
the one Republican they hate the most, because he's the one Republican who helped author the only substantial campaign finance reform legislation to become law since 1974.
I suppose that may explain why the Republican establishment hates the guy, but I don't really get why the base hates him too. I mean, he's pretty much had his entire head buried in Bush's asshole since 2001, hasn't he? Plus, he's spent the last several months kissing up to the theocon wing of the party, giving every indication that he'll play ball, and yet they still hate him.
Or do they? It seems to me that, given that a large portion of the country has had right enough of the cluster-fuck of Republican "governance" of the last several years, there would be a significant advantage to having a Republican candidate who appears to be rejected by the establishment that's spent the last 8 years running the country into the ground.
So the conservative elite and their mouthpieces in the media scream "he's not one of us!!!" at the top of their lungs (all with a wink and a nod at St. John) and the ignorant portion of the American electorate (which is, let's face it, most of them) says "hmm...maybe this guy's different from those other Republicans. And the TV says he's a straight tawker."...
Sorry. I'm not usually this paranoid.
The classic 'three legged stool' of conservatism is based on the following -- social conservatives ('theocons', those drawn to the conservative movement because it best expresses their religious beliefs), economic conservatives (the corporate cons) who only care about, basically, lowering taxes and protecting wealth and its privileges, and the national security conservatives ('neocons') whose primary concern is keeping America strong.
ReplyDeleteThe perfect Republican candidate appeals to all these elements, which is why Dubya has done as well as he has. And it's equally why the Republican Party has had such trouble mounting a competitive campaign for President this year. They just can't find any one guy who appeals to all three parts of the base.
To those who actually run the Republican Party, obviously, the most important 'leg' is the economic one -- the other two 'legs' are meant to support this core Republican value, namely, the protection of entrenched, established wealth, power and privilege at all costs. This is why, out of the entire field of available, viable Presidential candidates this year, the conservative movers and shakers picked out and anointed Romney as their guy. He's a corporate money man from way back whose primary allegiance is to the almighty dollar; those that have a lot of them already and who are in a position to make more.
Unfortunately, Romney isn't at all appealing to the social conservatives, because (a) he's a Mormon, and (b) he used to be a Democratic governor of Faggachusetts. Theocons can forgive a Republican candidate for many things, but being a member of a crazy ass Satanic cult, or, even worse, being a goddam lib'rul, ain't two of them. Romney could never be their guy.
As to the security cons, well, Romney doesn't have any neocon cred, as he doesn't have any kind of hawkish national or international policy profile to fall back on. Governors, in general, rarely have much international policy background to fall back on (Bush, as governor of a border state with a big illegal immigration problem, could be spun into an exception to this, while Romney really could not).
Similar problems plague all the other Republican candidates. Rudy seemed strong on national security (as "America's Mayor") but he was actually a stealth corporate con (check out his self serving corporations and their client lists). It was unlikely he could ever appeal to the theocons, though, and the further we got from 9/11, the more dubious his security credentials seemed. Still, the 'innerests' would have been pleased if Rudy had become front runner. He or Romney, I'm sure, were equally acceptable to them.
The others are unacceptable for all the reasons I've gone into -- yet being unacceptable to the elite that really runs things doesn't necessarily make one unacceptable to the grubby little people who march out and vote. For the past several elections the Republicans have had very good internal discipline and managed to find candidates who, while being strong for defense of wealth and privilege, can keep the entire Republican base in line with appeals to basic Christian prejudices and fundamental patriotic pride.
This year, the Repubs don't have anyone who can do all that. McCain comes closest, which is why he is now winning so many delegates -- the security cons and many of the theocons are willing to vote for him, as he's always been a strong proponent of American imperialism, and to many God and country types, the two are largely interchangeable.
However, to those who really run things, McCain can never be acceptable, because, again, he inconvenienced them oh so slightly with McCain-Feingold. They regard this as a fundamental and unforgivable betrayal; any man who would dare to make it slightly more difficult for them to buy an election outright is not a man they will trust with any kind of real power. So they backed Romney -- but a majority of conservative voters have so far turned away from Romney, Rudy, Fred Thompson, and Ron Paul (the first three are largely empty bags to an extent that even conservatives can sense it, while the last is, again, to a properly programmed Republican voter, howling at the moon crazy) to vote for the only Republican Presidential candidate who seems to them to have any kind of real substance.
Obviously, Limbaugh, along with all the other conservative mouthpieces who make their living from the media, are shills for Big Money. Their appeal is broader than that, naturally, but, in the end, they are going to back the candidate that the 'innerests' want to see in power.
What's going to happen next is that the 'innerests' are going to have to make a choice as to which potential President will best continue to defend the status quo. At first and last, the Republican/conservative movement is about protecting wealth, at home and abroad, from evil socialist-communist-liberal asswipes who would misuse the powers of government and established authority to redistribute said wealth in such a way as to diminish or even eliminate the power, prestige, and privilege that comes along with such wealth. The revolutions in China and Russia terrified these people, and FDR terrified them nearly as much.
Which is why, most likely, Big Money is now going to have to make a very tough decision -- do they throw their weight behind McCain... or... Clinton? Or maybe, do they try to see if Obama is for sale?
It's pretty late in the game for them to not have someone safe already locked down, though, so they're scrambling... and this is looking to be a VERY interesting election season.