Sorry, Republicans, Your Savior Won't Come | Ben Adler
The candidates whose names are being tossed out as options—Mitch Daniels, Chris Christie, Jeb Bush—have plenty of potential liabilities. Daniels has been fined for drug possession. His marital history is complicated, although at least on the surface it’s much more sympathetic than, say, Newt Gingrich’s. He also was director of the Office of Management and Budget back when George W. Bush was running up the budget deficit, something Republicans claim to have been upset by at the time, although we know they are lying. Perhaps, like having supported an individual mandate in healthcare reform, it could become an ex post facto disqualification.
Chris Christie, who has already endorsed Romney, has taken a stance against Islamophobia, a position that offends many conservatives. Meanwhile, his angry, abrasive shtick might play badly among soccer mom swing voters.
Jeb Bush is the brother of former President George W. Bush. I don’t think that point requires further illumination.
And what would be their incentive for getting in the race? To have their histories pored over, to spend days raising money and rushing to put together a campaign only to risk embarrassment? Since it’s no longer possible for a new entrant to win the nomination outright, the reward would merely be winning enough delegates to force a fight at the convention. If these candidates couldn’t be persuaded to accept the hassles of a Republican primary when it was winnable, why would any of them do so now?
Republicans should come to grips with the fact that the nominee is going to be one of the remaining, unappealing candidates.
Sorry GOP.
You flirted with demagoguery to court the most reactionary, most fearful, most paranoid, and, generally speaking, most uninformed and ignorant members of the American public (your propaganda arm at FOX News has virtually guaranteed this outcome).
This was your chosen method to “rile the base”.
You appealed to the worst instincts of humanity to shift blame onto any “other” that could, however briefly, keep your audience from noticing that the policies you’ve been championing for the last four decades have been an absolute disaster.
Now you’re stuck with a corporate-programmed robot that no one wants to vote for and a gaggle of crypto-fascists, authoritarian zealots, and antifederalists that no one should want to vote for - the remnants of a rightwing that should have disappeared long ago.
This is the bed you’ve made. And now you have to sleep in it.
(via sarahlee310)
