An old buddy of mine used to say," The hardcore Republican vote is 5% the super-rich and 95% the super-stupid." I used to believe that, but I don't believe that anymore. I believe it's 5% the super-rich and 95% the super-evil. If you need a definition of super-evil, try here.
Please note that I am not talking about the deluded and the ignorant Republican voters. The deluded can be helped to see clearly and the ignorant can be educated. I am talking about the hardcore GOP base, the people who come to McCain/Palin events and turn them into rallies reminiscent of the ones at Nuremburg in the dark days before World War II.
The great and shining exception was of course, Ronald Reagan. With his actor's training and his avuncular public persona, he could lie repeatedly with a look of total sincerity that neither Nixon nor the Bush's could ever muster. That's why Reagan is the gold standard for the hardcore GOP base. He was one of the greatest serial liars of the 20th century, something that even his most bitter opponants (including me) would attest to.
Which brings us to John McCain. McCain is a terrible liar. He tells so many whoppers that he can't keep them all straight. He lacks Reagan's carefully polished theatrical charm and often comes off as peevish and tempermental. Until he recruited Sarah Palin to be his tag team lying partner, he was viewed with suspicion by the hardcore GOP base. What good is a terrible liar when your party is at its lowest ebb in decades?
This at least partially explains McCain's desperate Hail Sarah pass. Sarah Palin looked like the perfect serial liar: a mother of 5 from a small town in Alaska who had successfully ousted the Republican establishment to bring in her own passel of vindictive social climbers, bigoted religious fanatics and low life oil industry lobbyists.
If the Barack Obama campaign is the audacity of hope, John McCain's choice of Sarah Palin is the audacity of hate.
But even the best actor cannot overcome a bad script and that is where the Republicans are at a disadvantage. The lies of McCain/Palin are so outrageous and so over the top that even the corporate owned media has started to take offense. From the lie about Palin's support of the "Bridge to Nowhere" to McCain claiming that Obama wanted comprehensive sex education for kindergarten kids, and all the ones in between, there truly has been a "blizzard of lies" as New York Times economist Paul Krugman calls it.
This won't matter to the GOP hardcore base. In fact they will spread their love of McCain/Palin even more fervently.
The GOP hardcore base embrace bigots and liars like McCain/Palin because in the darkness of their own souls they hold those same values. As individuals they are too dishonest to get up and admit that in public. McCain/Palin gives them permission to feel good about their their own bigotry and small-mindedness. Armed with a permission slip from two major political candidates, they can give full throat to their own worst instincts. They are cowards and if they had any sense of decency they would feel a deep sense of shame and would come begging for our forgiveness.
Don't hold your breath. The Repugs see 'decency' and 'truthtelling' as weakness.
The hardcore Republican base likes to talk a lot about faith. Not faith in America's highest ideals of course. Their faith is in a vengeful and savage god whom they hope will punish the rest of us with tortures that even the worst thugs at Guantanamo or Abu Ghraib wouldn't administer. In their heart of hearts they hate this nation.
They hate it because of the very ideals that let niggers and spics and godless commie fucks like us be equal citizens who can rail against their greedy christowhackjob hateful racist ways becoming the law of the land..
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