I was watching Keith Obermann interview Eugene Robinson this evening about the Republican party's apparent attack on the unemployed, when he made in important and interesting point: These goofy and seemingly way-out-of-the mainstream political positions are part of an intentional strategy that is banking on the idea of energizing the tea party and other extremists so they will work hard for the Republicans and show up at the polls.
Not only is Eugene Robinson right, but there is more to this than meets the eye, and if we do not move to energize and motivate our voters to the polls, this could be the most dangerous election in decades.
Here's why...
The Republican party has spent the better part of 20 years building the largest propoganda network in the history of the United States. Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Bill O'Reilly, and Fox News are the tip of a vast iceberg that features commentators and talk show hosts that are with in eyeshot and earshot in every market in the US.
Because of this, you have an entire generation of Republicans who get their news from places where they feel comfortable, which means their extreme opinions (even though they might just be political red meat to some) are reinforced over and over again.
And this means you have a generation of voters who think vitriole is the truth, and they really see progressives as an enemy. In short, there are thousands of American voters who think elections are a war, and that makes bad political behavior acceptible.
This is all fodder for a whole series of posts, but let's get back to the point. Now you have an army of voters who are "true believers" and candidates, some of whom are also "true believers," aiming to get those people to the polls - to the point of insulting and offending the rest of mainstream America.
Why? Well for that you can thank our American voters, who seem to think that midterm elections are not worth participating in. In short, midterm after midterm has proven that you can make huge gains by getting 15% - 20% of this country's registered voters to the polls. That means energy, and that means vitriole.
But this year's vitriole is not just extreme and out-of-touch ("BP, I owe you an apology"), but particularly tasteless and dangerous. The rise of the Tea Party has given us open discussions that are extreme, racist, violent and - well - off-the-wall. Nominees of the Republican party for Senate and House seats are espousing these same views - or at the least not repudiating them - in order to advance the strategy that says: If we get these guys to the polls in November, we win.
And the problem is that this could work for them. If we sit on our rear ends, do nothing, throw up our hands and say that President Obama and the Democrats didn't go progressive enough, do enough to end the war, give us the public option in health care reform, so we get what we deserve.
If we don't work hard and nationalize this campaign to make it the "crazy, dangerous" people versus the the rest of us, the "crazy, dangerous" people - the people who think our President is not an American, that health care is not a right, that BP is more important than you or I, that taxes are equivalent to Auschwitz - those people will win. And the Republican party will owe them. And they know it.
The Republicans are trying very hard to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. It's our job to make sure they do by getting the rest of us motivated to vote.