‘it’s not power they want but a vessel for their resentments’

Michael Tomasky has a good article on The Daily Beast about Ron Paul and the type of people who support him. A couple of lines stood out:

Some people take great comfort in backing candidates they know will never win – they prefer, on some deep level, to fall short and be angry about it. It encases their loserdom in a carapace of purity and righteousness. I had a friend, a hard-core leftist …. who liked to say: “Vote for the loser, he’ll never let you down.” ….

…. the paradox of Ron Paul is that if he gained any actual power, most of his base would desert him, because it’s not power they want but a vessel for their resentments.

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Never mind Ron Paul supporters, what a truly perfect description for the ‘pure’ left! (Although, of course, the two groups have a habit of overlapping).

‘the dim-witted freak show’ (updated)

Joe Klein (Time): ….It is excruciating watching the Republican Party presidential candidates who, on a daily basis, pronounce some ignorant racist or irreligious twaddle…today’s example primo is Newt, who really needs to get back on his meds, worrying about his grandchildren:

“I have two grandchildren – Maggie is 11, Robert is 9,” Gingrich said at Cornerstone Church. “I am convinced that if we do not decisively win the struggle over the nature of America, by the time they’re my age they will be in a secular atheist country, potentially one dominated by radical Islamists and with no understanding of what it once meant to be an American.”

There is genius in this: no other human had located the secular humanist wing of radical Islam before. And then there is Herman Cain, the former chief executive of Godfather’s Pizza who is pretending to run for President, proving that a black man can be as gutter-cheap bigoted as anyone. If elected, he would not appoint a Muslim to his cabinet or the federal bench because: “There is this creeping attempt, there is this attempt to gradually ease Sharia law and the Muslim faith into our government.”

…This is my 10th presidential campaign, Lord help me. I have never before seen such a bunch of vile, desperate-to-please, shameless, embarrassing losers coagulated under a single party’s banner. They are the most compelling argument I’ve seen against American exceptionalism. … this is the dim-witted freak show the Republicans want to present in 2012…

Full article here

Here’s a reply from Steve Benen to Klein’s ‘plea’ for Mitch Daniels and Jeb Bush to run (see the link above, Klein mentions them at the end of his article):

“….where I part ways with Klein is his expectation that Daniels and Jeb Bush could somehow put things right. For one thing, when it comes to the major issues of the day, the substantive differences between these two and the Seven Dwarves (Romney, Pawlenty, Huckabee, Barbour, Gingrich, Santorum, and I suppose Bachmann) are quite narrow.

For another, Klein doesn’t explain how a sensible, self-respecting, qualified Republican is going to win primaries without also becoming some ridiculous caricature. Indeed, note that Klein made no mention of Jon Huntsman — who presumably would qualify as a reasonable GOP candidate unwilling to “behave like a public clown” — probably because no one seriously believes the party base will tolerate him.”