Why are Donald Trump and Ben Carson, with zero years of holding elective office of any kind, leading the GOP field? Why are Jeb Bush and John Kasich and Chris Christie - popular GOP governors, past snd present - underperforming so badly? Why have Scott Walker and Rick Perry, also experienced governors, been dispatched from the race at such an early point? On the one hand, it’s funny to watch the guys we Dems once feared be sent home with the usual parting gifts. But on the other, we need to understand the process in the other side better, if for no other reason than that however crazy the Republican Party has become, they’re going to nominate SOMEONE.
I’m not a big fan of Chris Cillizza of the Post. I think he’s facile and too quick to jump on bandwagons. But I completely agree with his assessment of the state of mind of Republican voters earlier today. He cites a comment from a woman in a focus group of “hardcore Republicans.”
America doesn’t want a politician. We’re sick of career politicians. We did what we were supposed to do. We wrote the letters, we made the phone calls, and they did not listen, and we’re out to clean house.
It’s not that we don’t have people like this on the left. We all know the type, the purists who don’t want to accomplish 25 or 50 or 75 or even 90% of their goals. It’s 100% or bust. Compromise with evil is, well, evil. Realistic accomplishments are derided and denounced.
The bad news for the few remaining sane Republicans is that the right wing analogues of our perfectionist leftists have taken over the asylum. Think about the left wing purity trolls that you know, and then picture them running the organizing meetings you go to, the party platforms, the primaries and the like. Think what that party would look like and how it would function. Then open your eyes, take a look at the GOP’s current situation, and thank the fates or Gaia or whomever you pray to that you’re not in that party.
Now let’s go kick the shit out of those poor unfortunate bastards, and have no mercy on their benighted souls as we dispatch them to political purgatory for, oh, let’s say the next 500 years. OK? Good, let’s get to it.
