The Wingnuts and Buyer's Remorse

I first noticed this tendency about a month ago while watching "This Week" with George Stepha-whatever.  He was leading his supercilious, sententious crew through another mindless exercise of in-crowd baloney, the real lowdown on the campaign which only Cokie Roberts, George Will, Patrick (Heil!) Buchanan know about.  I think it was Cokie who described some weakness in the Obama campaign, some developing vulnerability which opened the door for McCain, and Will jumped down her throat.  He was having none of it.

"Strange," I said.

"They have to live in this country after the election," a wise friend said.

"Indeed," I thought.  Maybe I said that out loud too.

Now this trickle through the dike has become a burst levee.  The conservative writers, usually so reliable for knee-jerk support for whomever, even for whatever, the Republicans nominate, are lining up to take shots at John McCain.  David Brooks in Tuesday's New York Times, in his smarmy, snooty way, has delicately pointed out that Sarah Palin doesn't have any idea what the hell she's talking about.  Of course, he words it as a deficiency in "patterns of experience."  That's the key thing, whether you realized it or not.  A presidential candidate's chief asset is his history of "patterns of experience."  Are we electing a chief executive or a maitre d'?    (Where did the Times find this guy?  Brooks has the annoying, condescending habit of beginning his various fatuous analyses with dichotomous taxonomy:  "There are two kinds of people who serve in public office.  Those who..."  Here's another bisection:  There are two kinds of writers, smart ones and David Brooks.)  Then Richard Cohen and Charles Krauthammer of the Washington Post, all piling on mercilessly, using this Palin choice as their cudgel.  Of course, it's a delicate dance; these ultimate snobs don't want to sound like snobs, so they have to defend Palin against the charge that she's exactly like that woman at the PTA meetings who won't shut up because she knows everything.  And she knows everything with certainty because she doesn't know anything.  But that's exactly what these insider mandarins are thinking.  McCain threatens to turn the United States, in its present shape, over to a trailer park bimbo who is in way over her head.  They can't say it because they're part of the Very Serious Media, but when they meet for drinks after work that's exactly how they talk, and we all know it.  

All this reflects rather poorly on McCain's "judgment."  How could he do this to us?  He actually cares so little about the country that he puts his own election above the survivability of the nation?  Cohen called it an act of "political treason," and he's a longtime admirer of John McCain's image.

What shape is the country in?  Here's David Paul Roberts, former Assistant Treasurer in the Reagan Administration:  

"A country that had intelligent leaders would recognize its dire straits, stop its gratuitous wars, and slash its massive military budget, which exceeds that of the rest of the world combined. But a country whose foreign policy goal is world hegemony will continue on the path to destruction until the rest of the world ceases to finance its existence.

"Most Americans, including the presidential candidates and the media, are unaware that the US government today, now at this minute, is unable to finance its day-to-day operations and must rely on foreigners to purchase its bonds. The government pays the interest to foreigners by selling more bonds, and when the bonds come due, the government redeems the bonds by selling new bonds. The day the foreigners do not buy is the day the American people and their government are brought to reality."

In the law game, we used to call it "winning too much."  You were too successful at trial, creating issues of appeal for the opponent.  You won things you should have lost and now the whole case is in danger of being turned over on review.  That's where the Wingnuts are now.  They're dropping all pretense that they are dominated by an "opposition media," that fictitious entity called the Monolithic Liberal Media.  It has not existed in a long, long time.  Rush Limbaugh is heard coast to coast, Bill O'Reilly rules the evening gabfests, the weekend network shows are dominated by Establishment functionaries like George Will and Patrick Buchanan.  They have been winning for most of the last 30 years.  They got everything they wanted: huge deficits, a bloated military, wars of choice, no taxes, crushed entitlement programs, a fusion of church and State, and absolutely no regulation of Big Business.  It's led to the world Roberts describes.  And now they're scared.  Their propaganda has put John McCain in close proximity to the White House, and he's bringing along the Tootsie from Wasilla, who will rule the country if McCain strokes out from his high blood pressure, dies of a heart attack from his coronary artery disease, sinks into dementia or succumbs to a fifth bout of invasive melanoma.  Sarah Palin is going to take on that list of perils which Roberts limns above.

Kind of give you the chills?  The situation is not much better if McCain survives his first term. He's not going to cut the military, he's admitted he knows nothing about economics, or technology, or much of anything, except he's damned proud of The Surge, because that allows us to spend $10 billion a month of borrowed money on behalf of a country which doesn't even want us there anymore.

So the Wingers are in a quandary.  How do we derail this thing?  Which we created.  How do we go back to all the Fundamentalists, the NASCAR fans, the swarms of racists in Ohio, West Virginia, Florida and Pennsylvania and convince them?  "Just kidding," they'll say.  "McCain's actually kind of a mediocre nut.  Heh-heh.  Uh, don't vote for him."

The financial system in the USA is falling apart.  The housing market is in the toilet.  The deficits are careening out of control.  All the wars have proved pointless.  People are losing their jobs by the millions.  Hell, there might not even be jobs at the New York Times, Washington Post and ABC if this keeps up.  Hey Johnny Boy, you who would be Caesar.  If Brutus Cohen and Cassius Brooks ask you to talk a walk down to the Forum, watch your back.