Last updated on February 8th, 2013 at 12:46 pm
Obama and Clooney in 2006: BY TOM WILLIAMS/ROLL CALL/GETTY IMAGES.
So the Republicans have been shocked into disbelief if not into silence by President Obama’s re-election. Impossible as it was for them to believe a black man could inhabit the White House as anything other than a butler or gardener, they are having even more problem understanding how he could have been re-elected. They had managed to convince themselves that it was all a terrible mistake that would be righted when 2012 came along.
Of course, it had not been a mistake. Obama carried women by a wide margin. In some areas he lagged behind his 2012 accomplishments: Jewish support fell from 78 percent in 2008 to 69 percent in 2012; support of the “nones” – religiously unaffiliated voters – fell from 75% in 2008 to 70% in 2012. But when you consider that the only demographic Romney had – white Evangelicals – account for only one-quarter of the electorate and one-quarter of these voters do not feel abortion should always be illegal…Well, you see where the problems lie.
As Rachel Maddow, Jon Stewart, and others have quipped, do the math.
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But conservatives do not want to do the math. They look for the most bizarre explanations they can find to rationalize their collective delusion. So we find Tim Wildmon, the president of the American Family Association (AFA) – Bryan Fischer’s boss – and his research director, Ed Vitagliano, getting together with Joseph Farah of World Net Daily to talk about the impossible and their inability to comprehend our shared reality.
Fortunately, they didn’t do it in secret and Right Wing Watch was there to listen and to share.
As I said, unable to comprehend basic math, the conservatives have come up with all sorts of theories, including what was, up until now, their deepest thought yet: because people want stuff and Obama will give them stuff. Karl Rove even insisted Obama had suppressed the vote! How? By saying bad things about Mitt Romney.
Yes, the Republican Party is the Party of choice for rapists but it is also the party of those with the collective wisdom, knowledge, and emotional development of a third grader.
And as if to prove that assessment, Wildmon, Vitagliano, and Farah, dove even deeper into the human psyche than Karl Rove and all those others since Election Day. This trio of braniacs has concluded that Obama was re-elected not because of any allure of “stuff,” but because we are as shallow as they themselves. They think we voted for Obama because George Clooney did.
Here is the logic as expressed by Vitagliano: “I love George Clooney, George Clooney loves President Obama, therefore I love President Obama.'”
Joseph Farah, whose World Net Daily is a celebration shallow thought (and the dollar sign), said that Hollywood is “bombarding” Americans with “unconstitutional” and “ungodly” ideas (I dunno, even Hollywood can’t come up with the bizarro story lines WND does on a daily basis). Farah complained that law schools don’t teach the Constitution anymore, by which, presumably, he means the Bible.
On the other hand, I haven’t seen a Republican lately who would know the Constitution if it fell on him.
Do these three men have a solution? Of course not. Rethinking their position is not a possibility because like every religious fanatic since Moses, they think they’re doing God’s will. They can’t possibly be wrong. They can’t have lost beause their platform sucked. So instead of an intelligent discussion, we get this lurid example of verbal masturbation:
Farah: When you look at that election map and you see the big swaths of red and the little pockets of blue and the little pockets of blue are dictating to the big swaths of red. This isn’t new, this isn’t just in 2012, this has been the case for many, many years, every election in my lifetime has been like this but it’s getting worse. So what’s the answer? I think there’s only a couple of things we can do, we’ve talked about them before together, I think it is very important that Christians get down on their knees and tremble before God for what has happened to this country, what we’re going to be experiencing for the foreseeable future here and really take a good look at 2 Chronicles 7:14. That is not talking about the whole country coming to repentance, it’s talking about the people who are ‘called by my name,’ it’s us, it’s the believers, if we do this, God will answer. I really believe that, I think we have got to embrace that view very strongly in the days ahead. I do believe America is facing judgment and I think we’re in the midst of it and I think it’s going to get worse.
…
Wildmon: This was history made Tuesday night in this respect: a fellow won re-election for president who was by all measurements a failure, an utter and complete failure.
Farah: It’s so unbelievable, unthinkable, inconceivable, by what standard of measurement do the American people use to evaluate this guy? I mean if he was running against just some guy you picked out of the phone book you would have thought they would’ve rejected Obama because he is a complete and total failure.
See, we’re right back at “unbelievable,” “unthinkable,” and “inconceivable.” It is my guess that it will be a good long while before the Republican Party is able to move beyond this stage. You remember when Obama won in 2008 how they acted as though they had won the election. They did that again in 2012, telling Obama, now that he had won, they would follow Romney’s economic plan.
There is a massive disconnect taking place in conservative minds. Because they should rightfully be in control of the United States government, because that is how God wants it, they are unable to function in any meaningful way as human beings. Really, they all ought to be in an asylum until we can bring them back to earth, if that is even possible.
Meanwhile, stay tuned, folks, to an interesting next four years, as the conservative spin machine conjures up a new reality having nothing to do with anything you or I will ever experience.
Don’t worry: you won’t be alone. We here at PoliticusUSA will be here with you every step of the way.
Hrafnkell Haraldsson, a social liberal with leanings toward centrist politics has degrees in history and philosophy. His interests include, besides history and philosophy, human rights issues, freedom of choice, religion, and the precarious dichotomy of freedom of speech and intolerance. He brings a slightly different perspective to his writing, being that he is neither a follower of an Abrahamic faith nor an atheist but a polytheist, a modern-day Heathen who follows the customs and traditions of his Norse ancestors. He maintains his own blog, A Heathen’s Day, which deals with Heathen and Pagan matters, and Mos Maiorum Foundation www.mosmaiorum.org, dedicated to ethnic religion. He has also contributed to NewsJunkiePost, GodsOwnParty and Pagan+Politics.
