The Party of Rabies

It takes a lot to get me angry about politics.

You see, as someone who reads an unhealthy amount of political news, I find it pretty easy to disregard controversy as the media’s latest hissy fit — the histrionics of an increasingly irrelevant system. But last week’s report in the New York Times detailing the Ricketts Plan — a $10 million “super PAC” ad campaign proposed to billionaire Joe Ricketts that aimed to use state-of-the-art visual effects and high production values to directly tie the Rev. Jeremiah Wright to President Obama — actually made
me mad.

One sentence found in the plan’s text that truly got to me, and a couple other columnists, was classic Republican tripe: “The metrosexual black Abe Lincoln has emerged as a hyper-partisan, hyper-liberal, elitist politician...”

Excuse me?

I’m not sure what part of this sentence stuck out most. Was it the heteronormative suppression locked up inside the slur “metrosexual”? Was it the direct invocation of President Obama’s race? Was it the out-of-place reference to Abe Lincoln, who everyone seems to have forgotten almost lost the Civil War? (“Team of Rivals” was about more than just how Lincoln formed his team.) Or was it the view of what President Obama has become, an insight into the ever-increasingly tenuous grasp Republicans have on reality?

The truth is that it was probably all of these and none of these, for to focus on any one of these elements detracts from what this plan really was: a (real) high-tech lynching.

Some of the actual details were lost in much of the media coverage of the plan. The plan was to use the latest video technology to graft Obama’s computer-generated face onto an actor for use in the ad.

Combined with high production values (to indicate this was no “ordinary” advertisement), the ad would have sought to fashion Rev. Wright into a noose for Obama, to hang him in broad daylight in the eyes of the nation during the Democratic National Convention. Perhaps voters weren’t ready to hate President Obama yet, but maybe the good ol’ grab-your-pitchforks mob mentality would get voters ready to run him out of town.

It’s difficult to imagine what else these conservative strategists had in mind because the ads weren’t much different than any of the
current ones.

For the record, let it be said that this plan was a lot closer to implementation than anyone in the GOP is claiming. When the New York Times asked on Wednesday, they were told decisions were still being made on advertisements — and Ricketts’ opinion on this sort of campaign was very clearly in favor. They already had a spokesman — it wasn’t “dead on arrival.”

It was only in the ensuing imbroglio and the swift denunciation by other conservatives that the plan was magically transformed into “yet another bad idea” from strategist Fred Davis, the creator of “I’m not a witch.” Give me a break.

And while I think it’s good that Mitt Romney said, “I repudiate that effort,” did anyone else think that was an awkward choice of words? I repudiate their actions, sure, but I repudiate their “effort”? Who says that? It’s as if Mittens is trying to disguise what he’s saying to his supporters with big words but can’t seem to use them properly.

Fools and charlatans, all of them.

They have become trapped in their own closed loop of thinking, fed by their own BizarreStream Media, which spent the week focusing on some more birther nonsense.

They’ve lost the ability to think logically. In the Indiana Daily Student last week, a young conservative columnist claimed that “marriage should not be a federal issue.” This sort of reflexive retreat to “states’ rights” when you disagree with an issue is intellectually lazy and, in this case, laughable. For starters, if you think that, you have to think the Supreme Court decided Loving v. Virginia wrong, meaning you think states should have the right to prevent whites and blacks from marrying. So, your argument is either ignorant or bigoted. Or both.

Finally, the Republicans have no plan and no ability to stick to a plan. The Keystone pipeline previewed in Mitt Romney’s first ad is not a jobs plan, and neither is stripping away regulation.

This week in healthcare, the House GOP was forced to tear up its secret plans when a POLITICO report revealed that House Speaker John Boehner was considering keeping the most popular provisions of Obamacare, and far right conservatives revolted.

It’s clear the GOP has become a rabid dog with its teeth in America’s throat and foam running down the rivers. This leaked ad was only a preview of what’s to come. We should fear for the health of the Republic.

­— sidfletc@indiana.edu