Fear and Loathing, Again

So, there was this post on a blog by a fellow going by the name of Archer, in which he speculates that not only will Hillary Clinton gain the Democratic nomination in 2008, but that she will be roundly beaten like a drum by a more moderate, and thoughtful Republican candidate because of Bush’s complete and utter failures as a person, politician, leader, and tactician. His logic goes something like this: the next GOP candidate will be one that will be a reaction to the gross incompetence, hubris, and malevolence of Bush, thus soothing any hurt feelings, and making Hillary look like a bad choice in comparison.

I beg to differ.

Not because I don’t think Sen. Clinton would be a good president, or a viable candidate. But for two reasons: first, I'm convinced Hill will peak too soon, allowing another challenger to gain momentum in the primaries; and second, because the GOP is now the exclusive playground of the far right, they'll never allow anyone even approaching moderation, such as John McCain, to gain power. The only way for that to ever come about is if the extreme-reactionary led GOP suffers a humiliating defeat in both the upcoming ’06 off-year election, and the ’08 election. Until and unless that happens, extreme fanatic Christian hatred, and bizarre neo-conservative lunacy will rule the GOP landscape. People like Ralph Reed, James Dobson, Karl Rove, and Ken Mehlman are far too avaricious and greedy to even consider moderating the vision for their party. If anything, their pendulum is still moving right, and only a sudden jolt can cause it to return to the center.

Good lord, what am I doing? After the coup of 2000 I promised myself I wouldn’t get drawn into political handicapping again. The way the Republicans strong-armed and openly cheated then was such that it would make the Cosa Nostra blush to even consider. The blatant openness of the fix was so brutal and complete that it made professional wrestling look sanitized, and made even someone as jaded as me turn to gambling on college sports for salvation. 2000 was Poppy’s revenge, written in bold, bloody letters over the corpse of Clinton-Gore: the sort of grisly warning to would be challengers last seen when the Ottoman Empire ravaged Christian villages in the Balkans, displaying the rotting and defiled corpses outside city walls as a reminder of Who Was In Charge.

Ho ho! Who Is In Charge, indeed! Make no mistake, Republicans may be evil, duplicitous, soulless swine, but they aren’t stupid. After Ronnie’s pummeling of Mondale in '84, the GOP started to get soft, only managing to get up the hateful Willie Horton ad in '88 as any sort of homage to the days when Nixon won campaigns through outright libel and slander, painting any opponent he faced with a pink brush, while simultaneously singing the aria of the innocent victim. Nixon was the best, there's no doubt about that. And it must've killed him to see how far his party had degenerated through sloth by the end of the 80’s.

The low point for the GOP came in 1992, when an inbred Cajun assassin by the name of James Carville turned the tables on them and took some sex-addicted hillbilly from the Ozarks to the White House by stomping Bush I like a fat cockroach, using the same tactics Republicans had honed to the sharpness of a razor. Carville was a ruthless and bloodthirsty predator, and was so efficient at leaving the gutted remains of opponents discarded on the side of the road to be ravaged by packs of scavangers, he even earned Nixon's respect. Clinton’s unceremonious procession over the bones of Poppy taught the GOP a hard lesson: gaining power is hard, but keeping it is harder.

It's a lesson the Democrats have yet to fully learn.

Which brings me back to 2008. The Clintons have earned a special place of pure, white-hot hate in the hearts of evil, vengeful, psychotic, hateful conservatives throughout the land. And if Hillary does manage to get the nomination, the machine set up by Rove & Co which brought such disgusting slime as showing decorated hero and Senator from Georgia, Max Cleland, palling around with Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden, will launch an assault against her that will make the Swift Boat thing look like a love letter. No matter how much a veteran of political battles she may be, she hasn’t had to face the full force of the national Republican machine. These are the sort of people who fight with the tenacity and morals of a rabid wolverine, and for whom the ends justify any means necessary.

Politics is the roughest game around, Bubba, and the Presidency is the biggest prize. Not only are there never any gloves, there aren’t any rules or mercy. The firebombing of Dresden pales in comparison to the sort of malice and destruction involved in a general campaign. There’s a reason the candidates who emerge from the primaries are almost entirely distasteful, dishonest, and disgusting – those are the only ones that can survive. Nice guys get eaten. The system is gamed so that the ones that move on do so not by being a better person than their opponent, but by being worse. It’s the only way to win. The strategy of allowing your opponent to say you eat live puppies for breakfast because you have a picture of him eating them with a side helping of babies is the only way to the top.

In an election year, no one can hear you scream.

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