Wednesday, November 12, 2008

Whither the Wing-Nuts?

The extended network of GOP lackeys who make up the vast right-wing media conspiracy are scrambling to deal with the sound thumping delivered on the heads of their favored candidates last week. There seems to be a glitch in the daily e-mail system where they get their talking points and marching orders. Perhaps the justifiable addition of the word "Palin" to spam filters has blocked some of their incoming directives.

The primary problem facing the wing-nut community is that the entire reason for their own existence has disappeared. Without reprehensible, incompetent Republicans in high office to prop up and allegedly vulnerable Democrats to attack, there isn’t much left to talk about for the most uncreative bunch in electronic "entertainment". Ever since they got their long teeth into Bill Clinton’s ass in 1992, right-wing-nut radio has provided the 24/7 free advertising that played a great part in laying the fear-mongering groundwork for GOP successes in the congressional elections of 1994 and, the ultimate goal and prize, the "election" in 2000 and the "re"-election in 2004 of the radical-right Junior Bush regime.

It was a great run for the willing sycophants of the highly-disciplined message management of Karl Rove, who spun out daily talking-point e-mails and, I’m sure even to his own amazement, saw them parroted word-for-word by national and local mainstream radio talk-show hosts who were (and are) desperate for something to talk about and too dim or unimaginative to make it up on their own. Rove’s electronic nationwide network of butt-boys told enough lies and told them often enough that fine public servants like Bill Clinton, Al Gore, John Kerry and Howard Dean were made into national laughing stocks – at least for the all-too-manipulable demographic of angry white men who (Rove imagined) sat in their Lazy Boy rockers in tanks tops, swilling Miller High Life and cheering on the poisoning of the national political discourse. At the same time, the wing-nuts tried to construct heroic icons from the flimsy material of Gingrich, Bush and Cheney; men, the story went, who did everything right even (especially) when they were disastrously wrong.

Now – with the Republican party in retreat and its demise just a matter of time – the wing-nuts have lost their cause, not to mention their reliable talking-points. Their attempted destruction of Barack Obama a spectacular failure, the national radio squawkers are left muttering leftover McCain campaign blather about "socialism" and trying to create something out of nothing (i.e.: Sarah Palin). Since the election, they don’t know whether to declare a war on Obama that they have already lost or transition to something safe like sports or financial advice ("and now, Your Money with Sean Hannity").

Locally, they seem happy for now to continue to read e-mails from Scott Walker and incompetent cop David Clarke and talk up the Great White Hope of the moment, Paul Ryan -- whose staff churned out some innocuous crap about "loose money" and fed it to the Wall Street Journal, the house organ of the GOP -- as some sort of savior of a party that is going the way of the Whigs.

National and local wing-nuts are also failing to follow the advice of wise people everywhere: when you are in a deep hole, stop digging. They continue to predict all manner of socialist, Marxist and even attempts at dictatorship from Obama, the product of desperate last-minute nonsense from the dying days of the McCain campaign, absolutely none of which will come to pass. The Fear card is always the last resort of the failing right, and it is hilarious to hear the trained callers on the pretend-call-in radio shows talk about how afraid they are of the incoming administration.

You can’t blame the wing-nuts, I suppose, for trying to do to Obama what they did to Clinton – employing the politics-of-personal-destruction relentlessly until his impact is at least marginalized. But Obama has been immune to this sort of childishness so far because a) people are totally sick of it and want him to succeed, and b) he doesn’t have the same sort of jealous backwater cretins feeding them material, like Clinton had in Arkansas.

Having their ideas and their candidates so soundly thumped in the election and without anyone in power to prop up, the irrelevant voices in the national network so treasured and nurtured by Karl Rove are yesterday’s news. They might as well be standing on a soapbox on a street corner warning about socialism or howling at the moon. Having helped bring us the Bush Disaster and now exposed as wrong about absolutely everything for at least the past 16 years, why would anyone listen to them?

I’m guessing – hoping, maybe – that the appetite for the gaseous noise of right-wing mainstream radio has ended. Perhaps a return of the Fairness Doctrine won’t be necessary to return balance and sanity to the public airwaves. If they maintain their overheated ways, it might be a public hungry for change and, ultimately, the right’s vaunted market that sends them to their overdue showers.

In the meantime, I'll enjoy the spectacle of the wing-nuts blaming the GOP's deep failure at the polls on not being nut-right enough. Here's hoping the party takes up that challenge, running right in 2010 and please, please let them nominate Sarah Palin in 2012. The result, combined with Obama's anticipated success in putting the pieces of the broken government back together, will keep Democrats in control for a generation.

ADDENDUM:
  • I don't know if you noticed, but one of the rightosphere's hottest hotheads has taken his ball and gone home. On Election Night, the Texas Hold 'Em Blogger guy put up an upside-down flag on his site and muttered something stupid about being ashamed of his country. I sent him a comment -- "Oh, fer cryin' out loud. Grow up." -- and the next day, he had taken his entire site down and went into an unhinged rant as "Peter" on a Boots and Sabers comment thread, including hoping for terrorist attacks and some such. It's a terrible thing when people believe their own rhetoric. I hope the guy's alright.
  • In one of his worst moments of the campaign, McCain pointed to Obama with his thumb and called him "that one". Now Rick Esenberg, while continuing to make excuses for his fellow travelers, calls me "this guy". I am honored.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

I cannot fathom how anyone who has opposing views to yours could possibly be friends with you. You are so incredibly nauseating and condescending it's not even funny. You get your daily talking points from MoveOn.org, Daily Kos, and the Huffy Post and yet claim the same thing about the right for which you have absolutely no proof.

Were you calling for the demise of the democrat party in 1994? Or what about 2004 when they not only lost the White House but also has losses in the House and Senate?

I find it humorous how you try to parrot all mainstream conservative thought based on one blogger's response to election night. During the Bush years all I heard from left-wing-nuts was how Bush/Cheney/Rove were listening in to every phone call I made, were purposely killing innocent people everyday (air-raiding villages if you will), and that every freedom we once enjoyed were completely gone. Hyperbole and exaggeration, but it fit the mold you needed in order to justify your hatred of all things conservative and republican.

You have now set a standard for your president that will be impossible to achieve. He has promised the world and rest of our Solar System to the masses and they bought it hook, line, and sinker...and rightfully so with a nice assist from our national media who has repeatedly admitted their bias toward Obama (too bad they couldn't admit it before the election, I mean, that may have compromised their "professionalism").

Enjoy your day in the sun for however long it may last. It will come to an end and the democrats will once again be in the minority as the country's fickle mood swings.

Jay Bullock said...

Peter isn't gone. Just renamed.

Tom McMahon said...

Anonymous, you should have been at this blog earlier when Mike was really caustic. He's toned down to the point where I wonder if we're starting to win him over to our side.

Anonymous said...

What's with the "butt-boy" comment? I thought the left was beyond such homophobic, derogatory comments? Next week will you call conservatives faggots?

And don't worry. Those of us on the right will provide the same thoughtful and considerate support and opposition that the left provided Bush. We'll be sure to express our concerns in the same respectful language the left has while we pat ourselves on the back and mutter crap like "speak truth to power" and "Obama lied, people died."

You see, Mike, there is a big difference between criticizing everything an administration does--which is easy--and trying to present a rational argument as to why what an administration has done is for the good.

Mike Plaisted said...

Gee, thanks, Tom...I think.

Patrick: My favorite talking-point from the right since the thumping is "we'll treat Obama as well as you treated Bush." Right.

First of all, this is from the people who treated Clinton as bad as anybody has even been treated in public life, and then, when Bush came in, tried to say, oops, I guess we were a bit harsh, you guys don't have to do that.

And, for all the outrage how he came to power by stopping the vote in Florida and all the radical-right policies, mistakes, secrecy and failures, it never got nearly as personal as you guys did with Clinton and as you have already done with Obama.

So give me a break. But, go ahead. That kind of nonsense didn't work in the election cycle and won't work now. People are sick ot it.

Anonymous said...

I am continually amazed by the people of the political right - talk about passive/aggressive behavior! The ferocity of their rhetoric toward Bill Clinton cannot be denied nor dismissed - they came at him with apparent hatred, but let's try to think of this past - the average person had prosperity in their life, the economy was very good and the future was bright. The biggest problem that most I know can remember was the Lewinski affair. And while I wouldn't be prone to entirely forgiving Bill Clinton for this - after all what he did was wrong - this is no equivalent to the outrages of the Bush administration - from starting a useless war to advocating the torture of prisoners and every mean-spirited and irresponsible thing in between, the country is much worse off now. Our future seems bright again. As to this nonsense of Socialism, please, is not the rewarding of the already wealthy with riches from our government in the form of tax breaks the same form of "Socialism" that the right fears? What Barrack Obama advocates is a realignment of the tax code so that it is equitable for all - as a person in the $25,000 to $30,000 income range my "tax break" from the Bush Administration was quite modest indeed... With all of this noted I'm sure both sides can find issues to argue bitterly about but really, where does that get us? It's time to sit down and get to work, 'cause we are in trouble and in order for this bright future, that is apparent to me at least, to become a reality we'll need cooperation from all.

Anonymous said...

I would LOVE to have cooperation from all, but in this day and age, the rhetoric spewed makes it all but impossible to have proper dialogue. Sad? Yes! Reversable? Not sure.

The ridicule, and vindictiveness, started WAY before Clinton. Reagan was skewered on a weekly if not daily basis. Carter, Ford, Nixon, and LBJ, they had their problems. Hell, Truman's approval rating was 21% as he was leaving office, and many historians are putting him in the top 10 best Presidents. Do even a little more research and you'll see some visceral cartoons, and comments made about Abraham Lincoln. So by all means, let's continue the bashing. I mean why not??? There will be enough mistakes made by this administration as any other.

As for one party doing it more than the other, I'm sure the ideologues could debate their side fiercely, but the bottom line is no one side can claim moral superiority over that one. Both sides, in my mind are equally as guilty (if guilty's even a good word) of lambasting the other's candidates/leaders. Did George Bush deserve some of the ridicule he received??? Absolutely, but Clinton, Bush, Reagan, Carter, etc, etc, did as well.

The one thing I do not accept or tolerate is the palpable HATRED people have for these "leaders". In my estimation that is why the right is making the comment "I will extend Barak Obama the same respect that the left extended to Bush." The right didn't LIKE Bill Clinton. They didn't like the fact that his administration (wife) was pushing for socialized medicine. They didn't like his moral ambiguity. They didn't like his systematic dismantling of the military, but for the most part, there was no HATE (some yes, most no). There was little to no HATE for Carter, by the right. Was he perceived as a bungling red neck? Yes. Hated? No! The crap coming out of the left, for Bush, was nothing short of fanatic, and because of that, the right (for good, bad, or indifferent) is going to push back. Don't put all the blame on them....it's what happens when you're backed into a corner.