Well Mitt Romney just brought his campaign to an end with a speech filled with all the standard rhetoric and misinformation. Lots of erroneous comments like, “The Democrats want to declare defeat and run away from Iraq.” No Democrat is going to have a press conference and say, “We have been defeated in Iraq and it’s time to retreat.” THAT is declaring defeat. Making up definitions for this isn’t the same thing.
Anyway, it’s funny to see what’s going on now. All the radio shows are filled with confused conservatives who are now saying they are so against John McCain that they’re thinking of voting for Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama. At the very least they’re saying they won’t be voting at all.
Good. This party deserves what it’s getting right now. When you spend years spitting out raw hatred and fear at every turn as the conservative shows, on radio and TV, do daily this is what happens. When you put up a buffoon for a candidate, get him elected and then support his every move regardless of its incompetence, this is what happens. These pundits have spent so much time vilifying John McCain because he didn’t kiss George W. Bush‘s ass that now conservatives know no other way but to think as they’ve been brainwashed to think. So what that he worked with Ted Kennedy and Russ Feingold. He’s a Senator. Senators often co-sponsor bills with peers of the other party. So what that he was for campaign finance reform. Are you seriously going to sit there and tell me that the structure we have now doesn’t need attention? At least he tried. That’s more than you can say for 99% of the others in Congress.
McCain = Bad. That is all they know at this point. Little did these pundits realize that they’d done such a great job that conservatives would end up viewing McCain as being worse than the arch-enemies over on the Blue team. Nice job there guys.
I loved it yesterday listening to Sean Hannity try to come up with the most ridiculous comments on all this. When pressed as to his support of Rudy Giuliani he tried to suggest that Giuliani was a victim of having inherited all those liberal policies in New York and was powerless to do anything about them. You know, he was only the Mayor. He then actually said, “Except for marching in the Gay Pride Parade, Rudy didn’t do anything to support the gay movement.” That’s like saying that except for having gay sex with men on the turnpike, former New Jersey Governor Jim McGreevey didn’t do anything gay. Are you kidding me?
I also loved hearing him talk about how he’s all about substance. Meanwhile nothing he says has any. Remember that this is the guy who told us all that if the Democrats got control of Congress in 2006 that the next two years would be nothing but impeachment hearings. Well Sean? Where are all these endless hearings you prognosticated? He does this time and again. He’s re-invented a completely fictional Ronald Reagan (along with the other pundits) to describe how his perfect candidate should be. Mr. Substance talks about how fiscally responsible Reagan was but neglects to mention that he raised taxes in his second term more than he cut them in his first. He talks about how this candidate should be against amnesty for illegal aliens when Reagan signed an amnesty bill into law. He talks about how strong this candidate should be with respect to defense and Iraq when Reagan cut and run from Lebanon. Reagan certainly had a hand in pushing the Soviets towards the brink but he hardly did it alone.
Don’t get me wrong. I liked Reagan. Reagan took a country that had lost its way along with its confidence and he gave us both. However, he was far from the messiah that these conservative pundits would have us believe. However, in building up this fictional being these pundits have created a God that no real candidate can measure up to and now they have a great candidate in John McCain but their own rhetoric has blinded the base from being able to see it. McCain has a an actual track record for being a uniter. That was just a nice line for the current President but it’s actually true of McCain. However, the vitriol over having even said “hello” to Ted Kennedy prevents conservatives from even considering this.
If you’re a fan of Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly or the other conservative talking-heads then understand you are out of the mainstream. These people have erroneously convinced you that they speak for the majority when they never did. It is you who are out of touch with the rest of the country (and the world) and the majority has had its fill of your lunacy. You had nearly all of your “experts” railing against the Dems in 2006 and yet the elections went entirely in the other direction. Hannity said that “it was worth dying for” to keep Nancy Pelosi from becoming Speaker of the House (not that he was offering up his neck). They almost all were against McCain as a candidate and yet here McCain ends up the choice. Don’t you people get it? You’re entirely on the wrong side of the equation. Wake up. How many more issues do you have to hear these people comment on and have it go in the other direction before you catch on? When you find yourself thinking that you might vote for Hillary Clinton, as a conservative, it’s time to admit things are very, very wrong.
I, for one, am glad to see these people finally getting what they deserve.
