Michael Kinsley (who, in case you missed it, is back with The New Republic for about the ninth time in his career) is up this morning with a hilarious, sarcastic sendup of the various righty voices who have been whining that President Obama is trying to not just win elections for his side, not just pass legislation that liberals and Democrats favor, but destroy the Republican Party and all the good things for which it stands.
Headlined “Annihilate: Obama’s very secret plot to end the Republican Party,” Kinsley starts with Rush Limbaugh,who, Kinsley reports, “recently spent two days of his radio show wallowing in political self-pity.” He quotes Limbaugh thus:
I have alerted you and anybody who will listen that what the objective is at the White House is the annihilation of the Republican Party, the elimination of all viable opposition—and on a personal level. You know, not just to annihilate Republican Party/conservative ideas, but also people, the people who carry them, the people who believe in them.
After which, Kinsley does Limbaugh the great disservice of acting as if we are supposed to take this threat to the two-party system seriously, and rhetorically asks such reasonable follow-up questions as:
What on Earth does he mean by “annihilation'” And not just of ideas, but of people? Should we expect pogroms against Republicans in Obama’s second term? Even Rush can’t mean that. So does ‘”nnihilation” mean anything more than just trying to defeat the other party’s candidate on Election Day, a tradition that Republicans ordinarily acquiesce to and often thrive at? If neither of these, “annihilation” must mean that Obama and the Democrats are cheating in some way. In what way is not clear. It sometimes seems as if Republicans think that their ideas are so superior that any Democratic victory is cheating by definition.
It’s not just Limbaugh, Kinsley produces a few other examples of paranoid-sounding righty rhetoric about Obama’s dark, Republicidal purposes.
If you missed the link at the top, the whole piece is here.
It’s all a part of the need to whip up apocalyptic fervor.
It wasn’t sufficient to call him a godless, socialist, Muslim fascist–he got elected in spite of that. And the Democratic party did reasonably well also.
Well, if you can’t broaden the base you might as well deepen the base by throwing down more rhetoric that comes closer every day to inciting insurrection. Look how close the NRA has moved to that line. Look how many Republican members of Congress are openly disrespectful and contemptuous.
The idea, I would guess, is to build a base so removed from civil discourse and civic compromise that they form an immovable bloc that the river must shift its course in order to flow. Not much different than the defacto permanent filibuster in the Senate.
So how did the minority fascist party in Germany rise to power?
Increase the intensity of rhetoric, demonize their legislative opponents, make the solution at the end of the gun barrel plausible and preferable, substitute action in the streets for action in government, make civil-structure irrelevant, blame their problems on foreigners an usurpers.
Now how is that for apocalyptic?
“It sometimes seems as if Republicans think that their ideas are so superior that any Democratic victory is cheating by definition.”
Kinsley sure hit the nail on the head with that one.
They’re Writing Us a Suicide Note
As our Republican friends and neighbors lose favor because the public has become more and more aware that the “conservative” use of the words “freedom, liberty, better business climate” etc.,…
translates into nothing more nor less than further enriching the fabulously wealthy by stealing from everyone else.
They have proven that they cannot allow the possibility of changing their ideas to enter their awareness because the alternate reality their personality dysfunctions force them to wrap around themselves will never allow anything to enter their awareness which they do not already “truly believe” in.
Their behavior becomes more and more like the massively dysfunctional individuals many of us know who, as those around them realize how dysfunctional they are, tend to lose more and more friends and lose the love and support of family members,…
but who continue to insist that they’ve been correct in everything they’ve done and said,…
and blame those they’ve mistreated for the damage those others have suffered.
In the end, if such people reach a point of desperation sufficient that they commit suicide they do so as an act of revenge directed at all those who moved away from intimacy with them (as a natural response to their unreasonable demands and abusive demeanor).
They tend to leave an angry note filled with blame and resentment toward all those whom they blame for driving them toward such an act of desperation (never having been able to look in the mirror and examine their own attitudes and behaviors as the source of their troubles).
So, as they lead their party to commit political suicide, our “conservative” friends are writing us just such an angry, resentful suicide note. They have destroyed their party, but it’s all OUR fault.
I, for one, however, am quite relieved that we’ve reached this point because the alternative, had they gained continuing control of our nation, would have been that they would have played this out on the world stage,…
destroying all our alliances, even as they destroyed our national economy, leading our nation in what would have amounted to national suicide and decades of fiscal and physical darkness,…
and making us an international pariah,…
all of which they would have blamed on those who opposed them here at home and on the other nations with whom we share this rather small planet.
They would then have been very likely to resort to dictatorial fascism here at home to seek to maintain their power, buoying themselves up by inventing international enemies who must be destroyed lest they destroy us first.
They would very likely have taken us into a new era of world war for no other reason than to avoid looking in the mirror for the source of their own discomfort, anger, resentment, and rage.
If we had not seen through their dysfunctions and rejected them here at home, it’s quite likely that they would have dragged the world into international political, societal, spiritual, and ecological suicide.
They still could.
Or better yet
We can just spend ourselves to death.
A good trick
since most of our spending goes to other Americans.
The base
The Republicans are rounding third
and heading for second.
The base
Ha! I love this comment. It’s pithy and visually evocative, a wonderfully cutting analogy.
You owe me . . . .
a new monitor!
I just spewed all over this one!
Talking about evocative!
Thanks all.
Personal responsibility
Ya know it’s funny with these guys, for decades they’ve railed on and on about personal responsibility and how no one but possesses a sense of it. Yet every time they screw up or lose an argument or an election or get caught in immoral or illegal behavior it’s someone else’s fault. They lose elections, support, and audience and THEY’RE not responsible, it’s a secret Obama plan.
The thing responsible for Limbaugh’s troubles is his own dishonesty and lack of integrity. His attempt to blame the president is just another example those qualities.