Piquing too soon
By Noemie Emery
The Washington Examiner
09/05/11 8:05 PM.
http://washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columnists/2011/09/piquing-too-soon
It's war!
Only days after Rick Perry jumped into the race, the Left worked itself into a frenzy of loathing -- over his boots, hair, drawl and his devotion to God and his pistol, but mainly over their unrelieved horror that men such as he are allowed to exist.
Calling it pique understates the emotion: It's not his ideas, it is Perry himself who offends them. And it's really an old sort of reheated loathing, warmed over from last time, or perhaps from the time before that.
"I hate George Bush," wrote Jonathan Chait in 2003. "I hate the way he walks ... I hate the way he talks ... I have friends who have a viscerally hostile reaction to the sound of his voice, or describe his existence as a constant oppressive force" in their lives. Some came to this hate at an earlier moment: "When my friends and I looked at George W. Bush in 1999," writes Michael Tomasky, "We shuddered like people who'd turned a street corner, and stumbled across a dog's corpse."
Sheesh! They really are serious.
The thing about this is how much they enjoy it, and how they are never without a focus of fury. Bush hatred morphed into Palin dementia, and then to Perry hysterics, without a break in their rhythm, or a skip in their beat. Not since the whipping craze of the late Middle Ages have furies so strange held so much sway among those who think themselves rational people. They seem to need it to shore up their reason for being. To paraphrase a phrase from the old Jim Crow era, if they're not better than white trash from nowhere, who can they be better than?
With their dream boat imploding with President Downgrade's approval ratings, rage may be the liberals' maximum bet for survival. But even this ploy has its risks. It's now 14 months until the election. Can they keep this rage up for that long? If the Rickster flames out, it's a huge anticlimax, and their adrenaline levels fall rapidly. How can they rev themselves up for a run against Mitt, whom they're portrayed all along as the "sensible" candidate? Could Mitt be portrayed as a plausible monster? Compared to rampaging Rick, Romney would seem like a dove, and/or a genius. He becomes a nonthreatening change from a faltering president, and a draw for swing voters and Democrats. Their chances appear to be nil.
Or let's say that Rick makes it, and goes on to the finals -- how would that work for them? They could find that their efforts have worked all too well. They portray him as a bigot and cretin, a thug and a bully, and they succeed! Centrists tune into the debates and convention, expecting a Neanderthal to show up in a sheet, talking gibberish. Instead, they see an adult, calm and articulate, comparing his methods to those of the president, and, above all, comparing results. They decide his critics are the irrational people; and their overkill makes his performance seem much more impressive. (This worked for President Reagan, another bigoted dunce from a backwater college, who even starred in a film with a chimp.)
By then, they could be on the verge of a breakdown, worn out by the toll caused by Perry hysteria, on the heels of Bush hatred and Palin dementia. They could spend Election Day under sedation, in induced comas, or else weeping quietly. "Burnout" would barely begin to describe it. Could it be they are piquing too soon?
The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer. It has never yet melted. ~ D.H. Lawrence
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