When The Loonies Take Over

If Romney wins, he might find concessions from across the aisle, but not from the Tea Party Caucus. And if he loses, then the extremists will shriek in anguish that it was because he wasn’t a “true conservative.” The game is over for a center-right as the parties now exist. Down on the streets it’s a Paris-Commune-style bloodlust with an Ayn Rand accent. And muscular, concealed-carry-permit-packing Jesus is working security.

All of this is to say that it’s high time for the remaining Republicans who aren’t anti-science, anti-intellectual, xenophobic, fundamentalist fag-haters to stop holding their noses and leave the damn party. Win or lose the election, you’ve still lost your way. And you’re better than this.

It will certainly mean a few cycles in the wilderness. But you might want to read that Bible you’ve been thumping for forty years before retiring for sun-downers on the veranda: Sow the wind, reap the whirlwind.

The barbarians have long been with us. George Carlin once asked his audience to “Just think of how stupid the average person is, and then realize half of them are even stupider.” The first phrase is judgment, but the second one is math. And it sure seems that the dumber you are, the more likely you are to vote Republican. States with the lowest high-school-graduation rates run in a fat belt of ignorance across the southern region of the United States. Also known as the former Confederacy. Also known as solidly Republican. It’s not considered congenial to point that out in political debate, but you have to be willfully blind to not see the association between Republicans and the uneducated, easy-to-anger, economically-marginalized white folks down yonder. Hank Williams Jr. and Ted Nugent might have some remaining fans in the more toothful states in the nation (lord knows they can still pull in a crowd in Upstate New York) but their wheelhouse is south of the Mason-Dixon. So is the GOP’s. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-Dogwhistle, South Carolina) gave up the ghost on racial politics just last week with his observation that Republicans “are not generating enough angry white guys to stay in business for the long term.”

Let me be fair, here. This isn’t an exclusively southern thing. It’s just that down south there are more economically marginalized angry white guys than in most places — which does tend to happen when you self-castrate your own union movement. As has been observed elsewhere before, Pennsylvania is just Philadelphia and Pittsburgh with Alabama in the middle. But lest I seem unfair, I do understand that small-minded, anti-intellectualism is not solely the purview of our subtropical provinces.

But back to the point: Angry white guys also have a compellingly high correlation with some of the worst movements in human history, and so it seems to me a good thing that the United States isn’t printing enough of them to maintain a majority party in the coming few election cycles. But it also argues strongly that at some point very soon the remaining Republicans who are not rage-filled, bigoted troglodytes might want to start filing for the exits in an orderly manner. Then again, I actually feel shame at being associated with angry, ignorant fools.

Now, before you get your Red, White and Blue panties in a bunch, if you are a Republican and not an ignorant troglodyte, you have no reason to be offended. You are still part of civilized society. All I’m doing here is noting that there are ignorant troglodytes in America and that they vote just like you. Further, I’m suggesting that the nation (and your own conscience) would be better served by removing yourself from their presence and denouncing their dangerous folderol.

The conversational lifeline generally tossed to beltway Republicans at this point is to claim that both parties have extremists and that the grand middle can’t be held responsible for the moldy bits around the edges. But that is not true. Three members of the New Black Panthers played on a loop, do not a Mau-Mau uprising make.

Sadly, the lack of empirical factiness doesn’t short-circuit standard operating procedure in the media. One of the greatest strategic battles won by Fox News has been the black-jacking of CNN and the networks into feeling it is their duty to impose a narrative of balance even when one doesn’t exist. Look, Democrats are NOT attempting to suppress voter rights in 2012. At all. Nor is there any evidence that voter fraud is a problem, anywhere.

Meanwhile, in Republican states across the nation a quartet of laws designed specifically to lower voter turnout amongst traditionally Democratic voters (blacks, the elderly and students) IS in process, though NONE of these laws would directly target the supposed menace of the entirely fictional voter fraud. That IS a story worth reporting, but it means calling one party out for being both bigoted and anti-democratic. Which, while truthful and fair, is not balanced.

Something is deeply wrong with one of the parties in the United States. Consider just the optics of the conventions. One of them looked like America. The other looked like the easiest game of “Where’s Waldo” ever. The Republican Party is 92% white. That is really, dangerously screwed up. No matter what you make of the larger politics, one-race parties end badly.

And here’s just one way it is a problem. Think about this: if you were uncomfortable with blacks, Muslims, gays, Latinos, Hindus and liberated women, which party would you choose to join? Now recognize that there are people in America, who do feel uncomfortable around blacks, Muslims, gays, Latinos, Hindus and liberated women. All that’s left is doing the math. That’s the party where all the bigots go!

We ignore it at our mutual peril, but the ugly reality is that only one party speaks to (and increasingly for) nearly all of the backwards, bigoted, crazy people in the whole damn country. It doesn’t mean that all Republicans are bigoted, anti-intellectual, science-denying coots to note that many Republicans are bigoted, anti-intellectual, science-denying coots. That’s the whole point! The once healthy party is being overrun by the bonkers brigade.

But how big a problem are we talking about?

Here’s some numbers that might help. George Bush’s approval rating when he left office was at 22 percent according to a CBS poll in 2008. That’s a hard-core of stupid and a pretty good place to start winnowing the sane wheat from the crazy chaff. Further, in January of 2012, AFTER the release of the President’s long-form birth certificate, 17 percent of Americans still refused to believe that President Obama was born in the United States (Yougov.com / MIT). And, emphatically YES, if you still doubt the President’s place of birth, you are a racist. It might not be the dramatic, burn-a-cross-in-a-black-guy’s lawn racism of the 1960s, but it is still (ir)rationalizing  the black guy in the White House to be an illegitimate other. Which is bigotry. It’s a white hood with a smiley face drawn on it.

Further, in 2009, a Gallup poll found that 25 percent of Americans said they do not believe in evolution, while a Reuters poll this past May discovered that 22 percent of Americans believed that the world would end in their lifetimes.

Anyone wanna speculate as to the crossover in these numbers? I haven’t done the polling, but, ummm . . . that’s a five-fingered fit. This is the Republican insurgency.

Those numbers tell a compelling story that roughly 20 percent of the American public are inclined to be bigoted, anti-science, irrational, superstitious believers of hokum. And they ALL vote Republican. In fact, I’ll assay that the number of coots basically doubles once you dive into that end of the political pool. There’s a reason that Republicans are nominating crazy people for high offices across the land. That’s who they represent. And it’s not a Republican thing, per se. These folks have always been with us, and they move from party to party over time, depending on which team is willing to play host to the infection for political purposes. In the past they’ve been called Know Nothings, Nativists and Segregationists. They are consistently bigoted, religiously zealous, economically-marginalized whites.

They were the southern Democrats that stood up for bigotry with Bull Connor and hosed down black kids trying to get an education. Fortunately for my team, those poles reversed after the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Though, if they hadn’t, it wouldn’t be my team, which is entirely the point.

Forty-eight years ago, what is now my party was maintaining a majority status by bending a knee to the Klan. Then the Civil Rights Movement finally knocked through that wall of bigotry and a new day arose. It was a gamble for the Democrats to lose the Solid South. But it was the right thing to do. Then, by 1968 the Republican Party opened its tent flap to the bigots and herded them into voting booths, and they’ve been playing to Lindsey Graham’s angry white guys ever since. And now, in 2012 the bigots and loons are still huddled around an elephant.

Are they the Tea Party? Partially. Are they religious hard-liners? Definitely. Are they anti-intellectual? Unquestionably. Are they a nightmare to the rest of us? Most certainly. They are why “moderate” Republicans are on the endangered species list. They are why Olympia Snowe has thrown in the towel, Charlie Crist spoke at the Democratic National Convention, and even a dyed-in-the-wool conservative of a more traditional make, Chuck Grassley, started raving about Death Panels in August of 2009 for fear of facing a primary. And, as frightening as it is, they are why the “legitimate rape” guy may STILL win his Senate race!

Call them what you want. Some of the names that have made my shortlist of late are “Donner Party Conservatives,” “Coat-hanger Republicans,” or simply “The Knucklehead Contingent.” But they are the roughly 20 percent of the United States population that is bigoted, backwards, insular, uneducated, homophobic, theological and misinformed. Or, if you prefer a gentler phrasing: they are the 20 percent of the United States population that is most racist, backwards, insular, uneducated, homophobic, theological and misinformed.

But one thing is clear: Whoever these huckleberries are, they’re voting for W. Mitt Romney. If I were a non-crazy Romney supporter, that would trouble me, particularly since they’re now driving the bus.

The Surly Bartender isn’t entirely sure what happens after the election, but either way the Republican Party and the nation as a whole need to realize that the people in the country who proudly wave a flag of xenophobia, exclusion, pride-in-ignorance and a faith that reassures them that we’re only riding around on this planet for a few more years, are closer to the levers of power than at any point in half a century. You’d think that might be more important than party loyalty. So, once again, here’s the plea to my rational Republican friends: abandon ship. Found a new party. Cut yourself loose from these dangerous, small-minded fools. It’s a painful part of the political process. I understand. Evolution isn’t easy. But, as we both know, evolution is both is real and necessary for survival. The thing is, I can say that out loud at a caucus meeting.

Or maybe I’m just a socialist double agent and messenger of the Antichrist sent here to confound your otherwise clear thinking. Maybe I’m trying to lure you into a FEMA concentration camp. Because, you know, according to your teammates, that’s a more plausible explanation.