Saturday, February 25, 2012

Taibbi: GOP makes 'circular firing squad' for lack of targets

Here's Taibbi's take-away from the GOP presidential primaries so far, culminating in the Arizona debate:

"This is where the Republican Party is now. They've run out of foreign enemies to point fingers at. They've already maxed out the rhetoric against us orgiastic, anarchy-loving pansexual liberal terrorists. The only possible remaining explanation for their troubles is that their own leaders have failed them. There is a stranger in the house!

"This current race for the presidential nomination has therefore devolved into a kind of Freudian Agatha Christie story, in which the disturbed and highly paranoid voter base by turns tests the orthodoxy of each candidate, trying to figure out which one is the spy, which one is really Barack Obama bin Laden-Marx under the candidate mask!

[...]

"These people have run out of others to blame, run out of bystanders to suspect, run out of decent family people to dismiss as Godless, sex-crazed perverts. They're turning the gun on themselves now. It might be justice, or it might just be sad. Whatever it is, it's remarkable to watch."


Or, as somebody else noted, even Ronald Reagan wouldn't be considered Reaganeque enough by today's hardcore rightwing electorate.

Not that my opinion or Taibbi's matters to Republicans, nevertheless, I've been trying to keep silent about just how crazy the available GOP choices are, so as not to jinx anything. Too bad it looks like Gingrich is out of the running. My next best choice is Rick "Every Sperm is Sacred" Santorum. (Fifty percent of American voters are women, you dumbass.) Of course Romney, the nominee apparent, will be fun to watch squirming as he denies perhaps his best achievement as governor of Massachusetts, "Romneycare."

Nope, nobody can pass the GOP's Primary Purity Test; but it's fascinating to watch them all try. Then it will be even more fun to watch the eventual nominee try and take it all back as he runs to the middle: "No, no, America. That's not what I meant! I'm not that crazy!"


By Matt Taibbi
February 23, 2012 | Rolling Stone

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