Apparently Romney is being rightly condemned by almost everyone for trying to make political hay out of the killings in Libya, but I can’t agree with the argument made by Kos, (which may be tongue in cheek) that Romney had no choice but to attack. If you’re losing, you don’t intentionally go out and do something that will make your chances of losing even greater, and indeed, this may be the final straw for Romney, much like McCain was toast after pronouncing the economy’s fundamentals sound, and then proposing cancelling the campaign when it turned out he was just a tad wrong.
My own take is that Romney in particular, and the Republicans in general, have lost any sense that there are limits to how vicious and mean spirited you can be, particularly when the object of your venom is Obama. They have internalized the fringe attitude toward him, and believe that attitude is shared by a broad cross section of their fellow citizens. None of us are immune from the belief that most other people feel the way we do, but things get dangerous when you start to believe that the minority to whom you are pandering (or to whom you were pandering until you began to half believe your own lies) hold broadly acceptable views.
Since their venom has been tolerated and even excused by the media, there has been no effective check on its verbalization, but that doesn’t mean what’s being verbalized has become any more widely believed. Now their weird world view has to actually produce votes, and they are coming up against the fact that most people don’t view Obama as anything other than what he is: a likable man trying to do his best in a bad situation he inherited from the people who despise him the most. Other than Republicans, few view him as an America hating closet Muslim. People like him even if they disagree with the policy choices he’s mde, so they don’t recognize the guy the right despises in the president they know. Because he’s known, all the money in the world is unlikely to shake their perceptions. Romney, on the other hand, is, as Kos says, a dick, and all the money in the world is having a hard time hiding that fact from the American people.
But the incident still illustrates the double standard that the media allows in this country. One could not criticize Bush in the days after 9/11, or for months after, on any subject, lest one be perceived as helping the terrorist. That extended to anyone asking for an investigation of the events leading up to the incident. Imagine, if you can, the reaction we would have heard if the titular head of the Democratic Party had blamed Bush for 9/11 the day it happened. The reaction to Romney is encouraging, but it pales in comparison to what would have happened had, for instance, John Kerry done something similar.
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