If there is any doubt that the right-wing of the Republican Party desires nothing less than a super-macho male authority figure, all one need do is consider two aspects of the debate last night. First, how much more white and male could the panel of candidates be? Second, the biggest applause lines (outside Huckabee's comment on Edwards) concerned "September 11th" and all the varieties of ways each and every candidate would torture more, inter more, and kill more in the name of America. These guys don't need to run for President, but to the nearest psychoanalyst's couch. What a bunch of pathetic non-men, trying to prove their manliness by how tough they might be. I seriously hope this is the best the Republicans have to offer the country over the next eighteen months (yes it is still eighteen months until the election), all I can say is, "Bring it on!"
I know there are many on the left, progressives, liberals, whatever you might wish to call them, who still tremble in fear over the possibilities of the press distorting the process (along with that evil genie Karl Rove), delivering a win to whichever of these posturing blowhards gets the nomination. I know that they fear the polloi's desire for a strong man in the White House. While celebrating the Democratic victory last fall, despite Rove and despite the media telling us what a bunch of losers the Democrats were, we still operate under the twin assumptions of Republican dominance and public stupidity that limit our appreciation of just how much most of the country despises (a) the war, and (b) the Republicans who brought us the war. Calling for more, not less, war and more, not less, torture, illegal domestic spying and detention is a recipe for national disaster for the Republicans, and we on the opposite side of the political spectrum should, I think applaud them, encouraging them to exhibit even more blood-lust and macho posturing. The only ones who take any of these guys seriously is the press. All one needs to do is look at the polls - serious, scientific polls - to recognize that even Giuliani can't win, and he's the current front-runner.
I am not suggesting we ignore whatever dirty tricks the Republicans conjure out of thin air. I am not suggesting we ignore media stupidity and bias. I am saying that we have the tools to push back against them, and that they do not have the traction they once had. The ability of the right to dazzle us with nonsense is, for the most part, over. We need to stop quaking in fear of these faux supermen, posing in front of the mirror of national television and laugh at them instead.
Virtual Tin Cup
