I don’t know who first said it - accounts differ - but the most quoted political aphorism in Republican America today seems to be, “The voters have spoken - the bastards.”
Let’s look at the lamentations of our junior Jeremiahs this morning:
1. The media decided who the winners would be and are solely responsible for our misery
This comes from the “there but for the grace of me” school that says I and the intelligent people who agree with me all voted for X after we carefully looked at the issues, listened to all the candidates, thought about the best direction for the country and made our decision. The rest of you are robotic boobs.
2. This is the the Beginning of the End of America
Relax. America got through Franklin Pierce, Rutherford B. Hayes, Ulysses S. Grant, and Herbert Hoover. An enormous number of people thought Andrew Jackson was the Beginning of the End. Jimmy Carter almost was, but we limped through that as well. It might be the end of YOUR America, but nobody asked you to supply the definition in the first place.
3. I’m finished with the Republican Party
All right-ee then. Perhaps you can join the small handful of New Yorkers who thought the same thing after Pataki and formed the great New York Conservative Party. They have conventions and fund raisers and even campaigns with colorful buttons, placards and jaunty straw hats. What they never have is winners.
4. I know how it feels to be a democrat watching as my party walks away
This may well be true, but at least enjoy the schadenfreude of watching the cranky ancient feminists who are the core of Hillary’s support begin to feel same as you. Both parties seem to be walking away from the 60s paradigm that is the core of American extremism. We may well have an election coming up that features a man from the tail end of the Greatest Generation versus a putative Gen X’er. What you’re really feeling is the eternally self-absorbed Boomer/Anti-Boomer generation being ignominiously kicked off the stage.
5. I’m ready to endure the pain of Hillary rather than vote for McCain – I’ll stay home
There’s a name for people like you – Whigs. Those are people who bickered their way into nothingness (wonder if they called their enemies WINOs?). When they realized it had been so long since they mattered to anybody and tried to get back in the game, they had no chips. They grew old and talked fondly among themselves of the good old days and nobody paid them much nevermind.
6. This will be the only election in our Nation's history where two Democrats will run against each other for President in November
That might be philosophically true - and whose fault would that be? Hmmmm? Do our teeth gnashers today dare shine the burning torches of outrage on the real reason – the legions of you who scorched the earth for the past two years. You who defined a conservative purity so pure that Goldwater, Reagan, and even Saint Peter himself could not have passed muster. Those who do not spend their days and nights fighting politics but who come to the national parties only when elections roll around, arrived to find themselves as unwelcome and uncomfortable in the Republican Party as hapless dinner guests who show up at the hosts’ apartment only to find the roast on the floor, the table overturned, and cutlery being hurled left and right. They turned and fled. If the contest now is between shades of liberalism it is because we conservatives turned off everybody who didn’t come to wage civil war.
7. It’s those goddamned independents
And we know how much we don’t need them to win national elections, don’t we? In truth both American political parties are filled with such noisome extremists that a huge swath of America refuses to have anything to do with either of us. Do you know what independents are? They are the people who decide elections - the bastards.