The election carnival was over, the eight year presidential carnival was about to start. It’s closing in on 16 years since Bush II got up on the platform and the ritual, yet limited, dunking began…
It has to be as pleasurable conundrum. After 8 years mostly in power and some very limited dunkings, now almost 8 somewhat out, they’ve been having so much more fun! Despite the Affordable Care Act… OK: “Obamacare” or “Romneycare…” whatever way we wish to spin it… they absolutely have managed, for the most part, to do exactly what they have always wanted: make damn sure government does nothing.
Hillary’s the most fun they’ve had since, well, Obama, then Bill. Not even the quadzillionth Benghazi hearing will be as much fun as Hillary, but you can be damn sure they’ll hold it, just like they’ll keep wringing their hands, creaming their diapers, over Hillary having a personal server: which she had every right to have, or not being their bitch and retroactively realizing she should save every personal E she’s ever made just so they can increase the pitch of the vitriol during the inevitable dunkings.
You do know any, “Visited the grave of Socks the Cat today,” E will fertilize more conspiracy talk, right? Which side was it that claimed Nixon should have just torched the tapes, again?
Have the Clintons learned anything? One hopes. I doubt.
Even more than most of the other political nonsense going on these days, the right thrives on, only seems to survive via, all too convenient framing, nutso conspiracies and the boogeyman syndrome. Day after day, week after week, another regurgitated Vince Foster “scandal”-like farce. It’s all so carnival barker-like. Listen to Paul! Hear the plots multiply!
All oddly bouncing off the only one ever proven beyond a doubt: Watergate.
OK, well, maybe “Monicagate,” though perhaps better referred to as Consensual Suckgate. (Why do they call it “Blow,” when really it’s more “suck?”)
Why would they want to give all that up for the left being “benched?” Despite the very apt “who has the ball now,” politics really isn’t football. These days it’s more the political equivalent of the Brits marching in formation and the colonists firing from behind the trees, no matter who has been sidelined.
Yet, like any crack addict, the perception of having so much more power must be so tempting.
A bad sign from the beginning, and let’s not kid ourselves it is “the beginning,” is their attempts to turn the country their way via stoking some supposed universal, like-minded, national form of Obama hate, Obama exhaustion, that have pretty much fallen flat. With the figures showing the economy improving, unemployment lessening, access to health insurance better; regardless of any actual truth of such perceptions, they’re stuck looking like tinfoil hoodie wearing thugs trying to beat us into submission with reframing and spinning out beyond absurd conspiracy theories.
To provide one example: the cry goes out that unemployment stats are fake because Obama doesn’t include long term unemployment. Why, yes, they are. And they have been since Reagan started that nonsense.
I’ve been thinking about this…
Perhaps the Republicans would be better spending a few more years building these perceptions, embedding them deeper into the citizenry. After all: I seriously doubt Hillary, if she is the candidate that will win, will get much accomplished. Expect the caucus room conspiracy to be renewed and put on a even more toxic, steroid-like, level.
Perhaps Hillary might remember and change how Clintons approach the other side after all that happened to her husband… be more liberal than her husband ever was. Could happen.
I really, really, really doubt it.
Despite “all that happened,” I’m guessing she’s still as much a corporatist, as willing to compromise, as Bill was. This is who they are. And the one thing Republicans have been brilliant at is taking such and moving the goal post even further to the right, and Hillary will follow as much as she politically can.
The best of both worlds: the nation still moves to the right and any blame, like with Obama, can be heaped on the administration. Hell, like teammates all tackling the guy with the ball, blame will be piled high, even if they’re the ones holding the ball.
Why? Because this is what we do politically these days instead of discussion, and compromise. They’re just damn good at it.
No matter what happens in 2016, expect more of the same old, same old, we’re tired of. Like most of the country, I’m tired of this same old, same old. Hillary wins, Cruz wins, I simply don’t see all the stupid, fake, drama stopping.
But Republicans, wouldn’t it be better, more fun, to have Hillary in that dunking booth?
Well, fun for ya’ll…
…the rest of us have long since grown so damn tired of all this back and forth, whiny, smarmy, all too convenient framing, conspiracy laden, hyperbole drenched nonsense.
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Inspection is a column that has been written by Ken Carman for over 30 years. Inspection is dedicated to looking at odd angles, under all the rocks and into the unseen cracks and crevasses that constitute the issues and philosophical constructs of our day: places few think, or even dare, to venture.
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