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personally, i think the right has overplayed it's hand.
through the actions in wisconsin and the absurd theater of the ryan budget, the attacks on npr and planned parenthood in the name of fiscal responsibility while cutting not a single military procurement line---raising pentagon outlays on the books by 5 billion no less----it's obvious what interests the republicans are playing to. and they aren't those of most people.
they played an identity politics game in the aftermath of the bush disaster in the hopes that they could mobilize themselves differently enough to distance themselves from the consequences of the previous 8 years of republican rule---consequences which were a disaster. a series of disasters. gifts that keep on giving.
and to distance themselves from themselves and make themselves into a far-right version of themselves---which was functional-seeming because it was other-seeming---seems to have gotten a bit out of hand.
the lurch toward neo-fascism exploited the angst created by the meltdown of the real estate and related financial bubbles that their own neo-liberal fantasies about self-regulating markets and nice financiers set into motion, presided over and enabled.
they produced a classic astroturf movement with the tea party only to find themselves saddled with some of them in the house.
the tea party has become the public face of ultra-right idiocy outside the narrow purview of the tea party itself.
i think the ultra-right version of the republican party is in real danger of alienating moderates, who are find themselves confronted with incoherent neo-fascists to their right and no particular reason not to support obama because politically he's one of them.
i have the sense that even the hard-right operatives on the order of the koch brothers and norquist and rove sense it. they seem to like power more than purity in the main.
so now it's time to begin throwing the whack jobs under the bus.
what'll be interesting is to watch how the right tries to change it's language. continuing to make claims to represent "real americans" isn't going to fly so well now that everyone knows who these "real americans" are---and they aren't your average joe on the street. never were. but the language worked for some folk. i think the right media apparatus has damaged its own language games by trying to stretch them across these various mobilization changes.
we'll see if anyone believes the hype.
i don't have a particular view about the presidential field. i think romney is the most serious rumored candidate. but he can't appeal to the far right.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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