So, Romney does quite well in New Hampshire - some want to proclaim the race over [hold on there people - South Carolina has potential to stir things up again - but if he takes that, and at moment he's leading, one can then assume Florida goes his way too - then it's over I'd say] - was therefore all my Cassandraing about the uber right misplaced?
No. It was blatantly obvious from the beginning that there was only one legitimate candidate in the race, but because he seemed a moderate [and I defy anyone to coherently define what exactly they mean when they use that appellation or exactly why being a moderate would be so bad - Daniels too was abjured as a moderate even though all he did was suggest quite rationally that given the troubling economic problems afflicting the nation getting bogged down in 'culture war' issues was probably ill advised] - anyway, because Romney seemed a moderate huge chunks of republicans appeared willing to entertain outlandish, astoundingly absurd options in order to apparently avoid the utter evil of Mitt's moderateness at all costs. I consider that to be a bad thing - that people remain so enslaved to needing to set problems in an irrational emotional context in order to understand them, gotta say that worries me. Remember, Cain was an absolute embarrassment of a candidate - yet had he not self destructed who knows how far he could have gone - after all, the man obviously has a gift for fooling not only himself but everyone around him - it's not a comforting thought that a man so ill-suited to the job, so lacking in the necessary attributes, so mired in swamps of delusion and deception, so utterly unprepared for the responsibilities he had the gall or arrogance or cupidity or naivety or outright stupidity to ask us to trust him with, might still have snaked his way to the prize but for the fact he liked to touch women inappropriately and they were kind enough to step forward and let us all know about it. If the thought of Herman Cain [or Newt or Ron Paul or etc etc for that matter] as president doesn't cause a cold shudder of fear and foreboding and despair to quake through your body, then... well... then you demonstrate my point.
So, a healthy majority of republicans seem now to have come to terms or at least are coming to terms with the reality that has been there all along staring straight at them - I guess I should be relieved by that. Regardless, I feel like I've been driven at a reckless speed through a dark wood by a drunken sixteen year old and somehow survived - surviving doesn't miraculously change the fact that I might not have.
[and lookee, apropos of above, right on cue polls today suggest Gingrich has pulled into virtual tie with Romney in South Carolina, apparently buoyed by his anti-Bain Capital ads that even Romney hater Limbaugh has criticized as ignorant and detrimental to a conservative ethos - how can one not be troubled by the irrationality of all this? Sure, democracy, as I've said before, is always to some degree at the mercy of stupidity, apathy, populist drivel, irrational sentimentality etc etc - such vulnerabilities are the reason Obama and not Hillary is president now - but this primary it seems to me has magnified the problem greatly because Romney is clearly the only credible choice - it was tentative but still plausible to defend the questionable rationality of preferring Obama over Hillary - there is no defending a preference for Newt et al over Romney unless of course a reckless ideological imperative has trumped reason and clarity]
