Springboard for Hitler?

Nutball right seeks to destroy McCain

©Bryan Zepp Jamieson
http://www.mytown.ca/zepp
2/9/08

Ann Coulter, speaking before the Young Americans for Freedom, greeted the nominee-presumptive of the GOP by comparing him to Hitler.

Now, there isn’t much doubt in the minds of most people that Coulter is a head case. I’ve often thought it was pretty disgraceful how the trash right pimps this poor sick woman out to howl her venom at the universe.

The YAF aren’t people you would want for neighbors. Most are pampered and useless, vicious little preppies with brittle steel in them. Cheerleaders for the occupation and torture, you won’t find many vets among them. They have better things to do. Like pimp out Ann Coulter.

Coulter, of course, likes to play the disingenuous and coy bit. She sneered that backing Hillary Clinton against John McCain would be much like Winston Churchill backing Stalin against Hitler. (Apparently she didn’t feel like mentioning that Stalin and the US were allies in that war, too, and that without the USSR, the west probably would have lost in Europe)

She then simpered, “I'm not equating Hillary Clinton to Stalin, and if I did I apologize to Stalin's descendants... I'm not comparing McCain to Hitler. Hitler had a coherent tax policy.”

Sometimes parties are divided over their final candidate. This is especially true when there’s a brokered convention, and passions are running high over issues like slavery, or the Vietnam war. Democrats remember the rancor at the 1968 convention and the riots in the streets outside.

A lot of the anger stemmed from the fact that the man who had won the nomination had been assassinated, and his only available replacement was seen as a patsy for the incumbent and extremely unpopular president. This time, there were no assassinations; the guy who won the most primary delegates was going to be the party nominee.

Normally, the party closes ranks. The process has produced a nominee and the party moves quickly to heal wounds and present a united front. That’s been especially true of the GOP, who often prevailed in presidential elections because they could march in lockstep so well. They were given their party platform and parroted it, and allowed nothing to distract them from it.

On the Democratic side, of course, the candidates are in a virtual tie. Both are centrists, which leaves us liberals a bit disaffected, but as I mentioned to one of the weasels the other day, “The important thing is to get the fucking Republicans out while we still can. THEN we can have a nice big ‘no TRUE liberal...’ foodfight”. And I expect that the vast majority of Democrats will support the candidate once a candidate is picked. And yes, liberals like to fight among themselves. The Weasel Den is rarely a peaceful place. We consider it one of our strengths.

But not the GOP. Lockstep, lockstep, lockstep. Cronch, cronch, cronch. Here they come, dressed alike, one race, one nation, one mind. Der leader sez “black” and they all chant “black! Black! BLACK!” Der leader says “white” and they all chant “white! White! WHITE!”

But not this year. This year, you have dissidents comparing McCain to Hitler. McCain may be a flip flopper and weak on principle (neither of which are flaws in Republican eyes provided they are done by a Republican), but he’s certainly no Hitler. To add insult to injury, even as the next to last of the other GOP candidates, the fringe crackpot Ron Paul, dropped out, Huckabee won today's caucuses.

If you ware wondering if this does enormous damage to McCain at a time when he should be coalescing party support and presenting a united front sniping at the still-undecided Democrats, you would be right, it does. I can’t think of a time, not even 1968, when a party nominees has been greeted with such disaffection.

And that’s just the way the extreme right are. Their thinking, if that’s the word for it, is that without their support, the GOP will get hammered in the general election. That’s extremely probable, with the Democrats likely to pick up the White House and large majorities in the House and Senate. Possibly even a supermajority in the House.

They will then assure the moderate Republicans that they cannot win without the right, and from now on, they had better have the candidate the right wants, or not only will the right fail to participate, but they’ll actually work to destroy that candidate.

I don’t have much sympathy for the moderates in the GOP. In their lust for cheap votes, they encouraged the religious crazies and the viral extremists like Coulter and Richard Scaife and all the other vile creatures of the far right, and now they have discovered that those extremists are no longer satisfied to be just a part of the GOP. They feel ENTITLED to the GOP, just as they feel ENTITLED to the country. It’s a bit like a store owner hiring the Mob for protection; he might get protection, but he’ll never get rid of the Mob.

What the extremists in the far right can’t admit, even to themselves, is that it is their own policies and practices that have made the GOP so deeply unpopular. They have trampled proud American traditions, and imposed alien government controls on the American people, and thoroughly disgraced America abroad. Americans despise them, and with good reason. They have done America much damage and brought shame to a once proud land.  They believe that if they get Hillary elected, this will unite the party, and bring the country over to their side.  This is the sort of madness that ensues when you believe your own propaganda.  To that end, they are destroying their own candidate, and doing more damage to the only party that would have them.

The GOP will have to bite the bullet, and get rid of this collection of little nasties: the Coulters and Free Republic and Scaife and Moon. The whole of what Hillary very aptly named the “Vast Right Wing Conspiracy.” They will dump poison into the American system otherwise, until America is dead and they can feed off the corpse. They have no allies, just people they can use.

If McCain makes a clean break with these savages, and runs his own campaign, running on his own beliefs and principles (assuming he has any) he’s going to get hammered. But he’s going to get hammered anyway, and at least this way, not only does he acquit himself and avoid being just another sleazy third rate puppet for the far right like the disgraceful Putsch, but he’s taken the first step toward letting the GOP rebuild itself and someday be the party of principle and American values that it was in the days before Nixon invited in the lowest filth of the nation to help him win.