Stoopid Stuff

Building a Metaphor: Obama is Lucy, Immigration Reform Legislation is the Football...

And the Republican Party is Charlie Brown. Seriously, this is a fascinating exercise in clinging to an unpopular and discredited ideology and wondering why you're not competitive in national elections. It's so blind and mindless it's funny.

Why would President Obama choose to start another legislative debate on immigration? After all, if we learned anything the last time it's that the terrified old white guys could prevent any significant legislation when times were perceived as good - in this economy there's just no hope of getting past their racial hatred and demagoguery to do something either rational or productive.

But just maybe, that's the point. Maybe, from a political perspective, the whole point is to bring out the most irrational, the most clearly racially bigoted, the most spittle - spewing category of bottom dwelling wingnuts right about the time the Republican party will be making it's appeal for votes from something beyond it's white southern conservative christianist "base". The party has no chance of controlling these people, or preventing them from poisoning the well of popular support.

As a strategy it makes me smile, because the Republican party has been content to encourage the most rabid, loathsome, extreme fringe of their party when it suited their needs, and then ignore them and try to act like statesmen when that wing of the party caused them to be uncomfortable. But here's the funny part, the paradox of deploying the craziest bigots in your constituency to do your bidding. They are so dependent on their base ideological dog whistles that they cannot be controlled by anyone, to whatever detriment to your political strategy that might result. And that means that they can not only be deployed by your political allies, but your political enemies have that same control over them.

Time the call for legislation on their pet issue just right, and you'll have the most foul bigots spewing the most evil hatred at the very time you'd like to appeal to that constituency for votes.

And in case the demographics are unfamiliar to you, you just cannot win a national election with your support limited to southern white christianist bigots. Oh sure, you can win local elections, and even regional elections. But you have given up any hope of representing a national electorate.

My man Obama has not pleased me on the constitutional issues, but as far as the political process goes, he's doing a fine job of keeping the worst elements out of office. So maybe that's enough.

For now...

posted by mikey @ 5:26 PM