Wednesday, January 30, 2013

Conservatives Have Their Worst Week Ever

From Rolling Stone, the current holder of the Hunter S. Thompson Chair for Gonzo Journalism, Matt Taibbi:

Have Republicans, and the right wing in general, ever been more disjointed? More confused? More incapable of getting out of their own way?

Watching America's political conservatives try to counter-maneuver opposite Barack Obama's re-inauguration over the course of the last week has been an incredible comedy – like watching the Three Stooges try to perform a liver transplant on roller skates.

Let's review the basic timeline. First, Political Media, a conservative action group, decided to try to make an appeal to win the hearts and minds of Americans everywhere by declaring January 19th – previously known as Martin Luther King Day, to the rest of us – to be "Gun Appreciation Day."

More here.


The vast majority of the post is about right-wing missteps in the gun control debate, but it does serve as yet another comprehensive example of how the conservatives are in a total tailspin.  With foundational philosophical ideas that are increasingly understood by the American public to be demonstrably false, with a large racist and xenophobic faction that just can't seem to STFU, with a bizarre hatred for the poor, and for women, which also continues to spill through the cracks, and on and on, conservatives appear no longer to be the dominant force they once were on the American political scene. 

Actually, scratch that last bit.  Conservatism has so resoundingly defeated liberalism in the US that the ostensibly liberal Democrats are now effectively a conservative party, leaving those who actually continue to self-identify with the term "conservative" to wander around in the political wilderness wearing tin foil hats while shaking their fists at clouds in the sky.  That is, conservatives have been trapped by their own overwhelming success.  The American political establishment is so amazingly conservative that there is no longer any use for the far right-wing psychos who cling to their guns and religion.  They want America to be a conservative country, but they apparently don't realize that, at least as far as our leaders are concerned, we already are.

So they look like fools, over and over again.

Go check out Taibbi's essay.  As usual, it's very funny, and quite poignant.

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