STATE OF CONSERVATISM IN AMERICA (spiritual Alabama on crutches) June 3, 2009

You've got to be impressed by American conservatives: the die-hard ones, not the corporate brokers (well, them too). There are so many things to stir the emotions about them: their insistence against all evidence that any politician that they identify with never made an error of any sort, their absolute acceptance of the "fact" that God led honkeys to massacre the Indians and enslave the Blacks and intern the Orientals.

That God, in fact, leads the charge at this very moment (though He too often apparently has difficulty getting around Obama) in His glorious effort to eradicate any strain of Islam, return Hispanics to their point of origin (generally, the drug barrios of Mexico City), and get our capitalist profits back that were stolen by the Communist Chinese.

I have to admit that my response is somewhere kind of between vomiting and laughing with glee at delight at the single-mindedness of a three-year old in a sandbox trying to eat a particularly squirrelly worm, every time I read something about how the President of the United States of America is going out of his way to ensure the massacre of his voters by seeking common ground with Islamic leaders in the Middle East. About how this must be evidence that he "hates America."

Fifteen years ago al-Qaeda was a lone lunatic hiding in the corner on the Arab street muttering abject nonsense like "America is the great Satan." Few followers, no recruiting potential given the absurdity of the premise….since that time we've enforced sanctions that killed more than half a million innocents in the only (admittedly typically totalitarian, but no worse than our most favored friends in China) country in the Middle East run competently enough to keep al-Qaeda out, invaded it and let them in, massacred tens if not hundreds of thousands of civilians in the process…all on a premise so stupid that it doesn't stand up to the three word-question: Were WMD found?

Um, no. But al-Qaeda is now a presence throughout of the Middle East and recruits particularly effectively amongst devout young men whose mothers were blown up while trying to cut a deal at the local vegetable market. What would You do? (Say "Sorry Ma, but at least you have the glory of knowing that you were collateral damage in the great battle for hearts and minds." that's not me, brother? I don't imagine that would be most people's response and Dick Cheney's views on torture would be the last of their concerns, though his whereabouts might not.. (I'm still not clear- is he above ground again or still doing the hedgehog thing?)

Coincidence? No, really, leaving aside for a the moment that Reagan's foreign policy geniuses were the ones who armed what would become al-Qaeda in the first place, does it really make sense to anyone with a brain in their head that America becomes endangered by engagement with moderate Islamic leaders? Beyond, you know, giving them weapons.

You know, the ones a little bit to the sensible and democratic side of the Kuwaiti dictator that Bush the Elder sacrificed thousands of lives for. How are the Kuwaiti polls looking, incidentally?

If the Republicans had any sense of what they've done, and any guts at all, their position would be on their knees offering taxes to anything different.

Weather Forecast

The Republican Party as represented at the grassroots level in most of the dwindling number of states with Republican majorities…socio-political evolution demanded the extinction of that pathetic affront on human dignity by 1974 if not 29 years earlier. They held on-admirably in an electoral sense-through the manipulations of the corporate class, who largely live in Democratic states anyway, don't give a rat's ass about school prayer or abortion (results when they thought they were winning?), and found the perfect foil in Ronald Reagan.

Their problem being-all of them-what to do now. At first glance the Republican Party reminds me of the Democratic Party circa 1989: lost, humiliated, defeated, muttering only slightly more coherently than the crazy guy down the block, willing to misrepresent virtually anything in order to gain a quarter point in the Nielsen ratings.

But you look closer and the reality is significantly worse. The Democrats bailed themselves out, electorally (and crippled themselves in more important ways) by turning to the most vapid presidential candidate, perhaps in history: Bill Clinton. Yep, sure enough, after Reagan/Bush Americans were delighted to vote for nothing. Wheee….!

But the Republicans, much as they might like to win an election behind someone who doesn't do or stand for anything (this would be their best winner since Eisenhower, at least)….just don't have a saleable product on the horizon. Palin? Haha, I can see her ignorance from my house, every time she says anything on tv! Romney? Wall Street would love him, but he'd be in danger of pulling less than 20% against Obama even from evangelicals interested in learning how to shoot abortion doctors, and they might instead start shooting at stockbrokers. Newt Gingrich? He's smarter, but never been able to go more than a few weeks without devout efforts to destroy himself that would impress F. Scott Fitzgerald. Bobby Jindal?! Yep, last time I saw him he looked like he might be ready in, oh ….fifty years!

Obama

With regards to Jindal, our Republican friends must understand that Obama is neither great because he's a minority, effective because he's a minority, nor, anymore, vulnerable because he's a minority. He is now a known quantity, and unlike most politicians his popularity isn't fading in the face of familiarity.

He's tough because he's a regular guy with a pedigree developed entirely on his own. Mixed feelings about it are your business. Name the last Republican president who had the guts to overthrow the biggest polluting lobby in the country while at the same time correcting what the past four presidents did to the economy. Yes Reagan eliminated tax breaks for renewable energy and took Carter's solar panels off the roof of the White House, but was solar the biggest polluting lobby at that time…? I wonder.

That doesn't make Obama right about everything (he runs back and forth in the A-/B+ range for me), and that doesn't make him infallible (as a shocking number still find the Nazi Pope or that '80s president who armed Iraq, the Iranians and al-Qaeda), but it does him tough. Make no more mistakes.

You've got to do more to beat a man like Barack Obama than trot out journalists who've mad a career of keeping their tails between their legs to run interference, you've got to do better than act scared. And that's all that the Republicans are capable of right now. And for good reason. Electorally they're doomed, and as Tricky Dick Nixon so famously told Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, "Fuck the doomed."

Obama please lead us back home

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