It’s gotta be pretty bad when the strongest case you can make for your party is that your fellow partisans mostly aren’t really crazy, but that’s the line of argument advanced today by Ross Douthat, one of the NY Times’ house conservatives, in a column with the same title (without the question mark) as this diary. Douthat is taking satisfaction in the fact that the Republicans are apparently choosing the “safe” candidate, Romney, after having “methodically” examined and rejected the “bomb-throwers and ideologues”--Cain, Bachman, Trump, Perry.
Douthat has a talent for eliding important details. Cain wasn’t rejected for ideological reasons but because of sexual scandals. One of Perry’s crippling mistakes was to hint imprudently at a glimmer of moderation on immigration policy. Trump showed himself to be an ego-driven clown.
Douthat’s desperation is also evident in his trumpeting of the last non-Romney standing, Rick Santorum, as a plausible and substantive candidate. Santorum certainly is substantive, but the substance--including opposition to birth control and revulsion at our 200+ year tradition of separation of church and state--is scary. And of course, the presumably sensible Romney has succeeded only by pretending to be as crazy as his opponents. I don’t remember Romney, when given the opportunity, acknowledging the science of evolution or climate change, or denouncing Limbaugh’s outrages.
Face it, Ross, a majority of Republican Party identifiers really are crazy. OK, not crazy in the literal clinical sense, but crazy in the political sense--attached to beliefs that are patent nonsense, and impervious to logic or evidence that conflicts with those beliefs. This is a party whose partisans, according to polls in recent years, by substantial pluralities and in some cases majorities, have believed that President Obama was not born in this country and/or is a Muslim; that the earth is 10,000 years old or less; and that global warming is a hoax. In one poll, a majority of Republicans either believed that Obama was actually “on the side of the terrorists” or weren’t sure.
Not crazy? That’s not saying much, is it? And it’s still unconvincing.