Payback Is A Mother

According the talking heads I listen to, the so-called “Republican establishment” (Karl Rove?) is/are tearing their hair over the possibility that Newt might become their candidate.  They should be worried:  Newt’s unfavorable ratings are sky-high, and he has a 100% recognition rating.  That is to say, statistically speaking, all Americans know who he is, and some 60% of them view him unfavorably.

This makes me smile.  I had some worries that Mitt might give Obama a run because of the sorry state of the economy, for which Obama can unfairly be blamed by low-information voters.  But now it looks as though the remaining rethug candidates will tear one another to shreds prior to the convention, so that Obama can simply use a whiskbroom to tidy up the bloody chunks that remain.

And the rethug powerbrokers who are shocked! shocked! by the nastiness of Newt’s rhetoric make me wish that Dana Carvey was still doing Church Lady–he could do justice to their tight-assed distaste for the monster they created when they took Lee Atwater’s advice to keep shouting “nigger!” oh those many years ago.

But, as Waylon taught us, what goes around comes around.  The rethugs have spent years playing to racism, resentment, and anger among conservative voters, while Faux News has made an art form out of rendering them ignorant of reality.  So now, it’s a little too late for their intellectual class to weep crocodile tears when they hear ignorance, anger, and racism from Newt and conservative audiences cheering him on.

They know that undecided voters who watch Newt at work in a debate will likely be repelled by most everything he says, because he delivers everything with a sneer.  But there’s not a damn thing they can do about it because the election is now in the hands of the delegates and the voters they’ve turned into rampaging numbskulls.

A most satisfactory state of affairs.