Dear Howie,
Out here is sheep country,
Me and the flock all voted for Romney/Ryan.
We can't understand how Obama won.
Jed
On the theme of sheep-shearing, David Frum on Morning Joe today said in effect that when Fox News is on TV, sheep may no longer graze without losing their coats as winter closes in, or maybe even becoming mutton. Frum said that the "right-wing entertainment complex" has been selling lies to a gullible audience and reaping millions in profits. He said that he has been speaking with groups of GOP base voters who consistently expressed counter-factual beliefs about all kinds of things. For example, they all thought for sure that taxes had gone up under Obama.
Frum comes from the conservative side, but he has an unusual attachment to intellectual honesty. I mean unusual for righties, of course. He has already got an e-book out, Why Romney Lost. His urgency in getting it out so quickly is presumably driven by his hope to affect the course of the Repubican debate on where to go from here. He knows that many in the GOP will blame the losses on too much moderation or on anything else but the need to rethink essential policy, and he knows that that denial is just digging in and doubling down on a false version of reality. That version has great ovine appeal, but in 2012 even 62% of those white sheep no longer make for an American majority.
Frum addresses the actual policy disconnect between the actual American electorate and the GOP. The others on the right want to blame Sandy, Christie and/or the primary process that drove the GOP to the extreme right.
The fault, however, is neither in their stars nor in their process (nor in the storm), it is in them, that they are fighting to return the country to a white bread, white-male-dominated Mad Men society that in fact never existed. In the supposedly halcyon days of the 1950's, tax rates were far higher. But minorities did know their place, abortion was not legal, and the Bible was read before class every day, so why can't we just tweak the tax rates a bit and restore the Christian country that worked so very well for... um, y'know, for real Americans.
An acquaintance of mine who lives outside the country rebuked me for sending out the message "Hurray For Humanity!!!!" on Tuesday night in reaction to Obama's re-election. Said I was being too partisan, as if I were whooping for a goal at a soccer game. (This was not even a Romney supporter.)
Which goes to show that there are still people across the political spectrum who don't get what was at stake on Tuesday. We who do get it, we celebrate that we got Obama in, a man who does demonstrate recognition of critical human realities like income inequality, global warming, and the need for everyone to have health care. We also rejoice that we did not elect a vulture capitalist whose whole argument, as David Frum said this morning, was that we should repeal Obamacare, end Medicare and cut Medicaid by 1/3, all so that we could cut taxes for him and his rich friends. And we know that in the process we did another mitzvah for humanity in resoundingly repudiating the fictional Fox/RNC alternate reality.
This Ben Sargent piece puts a pithy toon to the words "Hurray For Humanity":
November 9, 2012
The Repubican spinners are out there saying the re-election of a GOP House majority shows that Americans endorsed their obstructionism on raising revenues -- and presumably on everything else.
Which is utter nonsense, since the public approval of Congress is historically low.
But if it's nonsense, how's come they still own a substantial majority? It's called 2010, year of redistricting and gerrymandering, after the GOP had cleaned up in the mid-terms as Democrats failed to turn out and repealing Obamacare was the cause celebre. Astonishingly, the redistricting worked so well for them that on Tuesday the GOP retained a majority of around 40 seats despite the fact that the Democratic candidates for House seats totaled about 550,000 more cumulative votes than their GOP opponents did! You can check it out for yourself.
So it is hard to see how the House changes hands before 2020 (next census/redistricting) unless the GOP is perceived by a greater majority than at present as being indifferent to the will and welfare of 99% of the people.The bottom line is that we will have to put the pressure on from the grass roots to make Congress responsive to the will and welfare of the people.
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