Somewhere out there — okay, over on Fox, probably — Karl Rove is laughing maniacally. This, you see, is the way Karl drew it up in 2000, and 2002, and 2004, and 2006. Screw the muddled middle — they don’t matter. Piss on the liberals — they hate us anyhow. And fuck anyone who doesn’t have our back. Rally the base, rally the base, rally the base — and on Election Day, more of our people will come out than theirs.That’s the plan, my friends — that’s the game. The Republican Party took a look at the politics of hope, and said, “Screw it, let’s sell fear. It’s worked so far.”
Gone is the last vestige of John McCain ca. 2000. There is no more appealing to America’s better angels. There is only fear — fear of the urbane black man who the cross-dressing, thrice-divorced Manhattan denizen ((Not that there’s anything wrong with that)) claims is too “cosmopolitan,” because being aware of the wider world is bad. There is the fear that Obama will increase the flow of orders from Washington, said by the vice presidential candidate who later notes, with a sneer, that Obama would extend basic civil liberties even to bad guys. Because we always know who the bad guys are, and we only deny civil liberties to them, not to good people like you. There is the tax bogeyman, the terror snark, the “othering” boojum. And then the GOP turns to policy, and we find out that we should drill for oil, and…well, that’s all, folks! Good night!
No, neither of the featured speakers tonight — not Mayor 9/11, not Gov. Quayle — advanced any notion of what the Republicans stand for, what they support, how they’d govern, why they want power in the first place. For all their attacks on the Obama campaign as full of flash and emptiness, it was the GOP that spent tonight on glittering generalities. Did you know that Barack Obama will raise your taxes? That he wants to make us less safe? (Really?) That he hates small-town America? That he’s totally unqualified for the office, because he lacks executive experience (as does, one might note, John McCain)? That he was a…community organizer?
Meanwhile, you may not know this, but John McCain was also a community organizer…when he was a POW. And by the way, did you know that Republicans love America, Jesus, and everything you love? All righty then.
How will we fix our economy? Insert the same shopworn paean to lower taxes that has replaced fiscal policy in the Republican Party. How will we fix the health care crisis? Hey, Sarah Palin was against care for the disabled before she was for it. How will we turn things around in Afghanistan? Obama wants to quit in Iraq. How will we restore America’s image abroad? Make our country safer? Maybe, you know, find Osama bin Laden someday? Hey, how about you just shut up.
The GOP has declared, once and for all, that policy doesn’t matter. And it can’t, because they’re on the wrong side of it — from economics to social to foreign policy, America has turned against the Republican Party, which is what happens when your party screws up as badly as the GOP has. And so all they can do is try to rally that base, one more time, and hope that they can sell fear as the antidote to hope, just one more time. And that Americans will buy it, that they’ll buy it like they did in ’02 and ’04, or that it will be at least close enough to steal.
And it will be up to us whether we decide to embrace the politics of fear or the politics of hope, whether we make our choice out of a belief in the best America has, or whether we make our choice out of the fear of change.
In the end, my friends, we will get the president that we as a country deserve. If we pick McCain, it will be disastrous — but we won’t be able to say we didn’t realize what we were buying.
I am sorry, but this divide between “the politics of fear” and “the politics of hope” does not add up. You can, if you choose, spin the Republican stance as the politics of hope, too.
Granted, it seems clear that the Republicans propose to go down the same path which they have followed since 2000, and that this path is the road to destruction.
However, is the Democratic “politics of hope” not an attempt to conceal the fact that they propose to go down the same path which they have followed since 1992, and that this path, too, is the road to destruction, parallel with the one followed by the Republicans?
Be careful.
I dunno, I heard a lot of “be afraid!” overtones in Palin’s speech last night – quality aside. No matter what the actual policies are, both sides are indeed selling hope and fear. The Republicans tell us to be afraid of the other guy – he’s a community organizer! He likes arugula! He went to Harvard! He has no experience! He sympathizes with evildoers! He’s too PC to call out terrorists! etc. etc. etc.
Way to not advance anything, I say.