GOP Desperation
James Joyner has the latest GOP ad. He sums it up as “vote democrat and you will die.” He compares it in tone with the famous once-run “Daisy Girl” ad used (successfully) by Johnson in 1964. The tone is definitely as serious, but the vast difference in the levels of the respective threats makes the current GOP ad seem disproportionately grave. In fact, as the ad played — featuring a 60-minutes-esque ticking accompanying the terrorist propaganda — I found myself humming Mozart’s Dies Irae (“day of wrath”), as a mockingly ominous way of drowning out the annoying tick-tock of doom.
The ticking background is rather apt, because frankly, this is the same one-note symphony we’ve been hearing the Republicans use since 9/11. I doubt that hitting that same note — only louder — is going to be the thing that turns around their dismal approval ratings and pulls out a win in November.
The Republican playbook:
- Hype the threat, to the point where Republicans almost seem like the best vehicle for Jihadi propaganda (it’s like al-Jazeera in condensed format).
- Make terrorism out to be an existential threat. “Good God, man! Our nation is at stake!”
- Abandon/ignore the base on taxes, spending, immigration. Terrorism and the methods of fighting it that increase the government’s size and scope are the only things that matter.
- View Republican control of the government as a goal, instead of a means to an end. It’s been said that the Republican party is the party of bad ideas and the Democratic party is the party of no ideas — but “stay the course” doesn’t qualify as an idea when the course clearly isn’t working. That’s a default — a lack of ideas for how to proceed.
And the best flounder that Sean Hannity can come up with is the charge that all the conservatives who see things this way are being mislead by the liberal media. That anyone who is having doubts about the direction of the Republican party should just snap out of it and realize that preventing Democratic control of the government is the only thing that matters. You can hear the desperation in his voice. He’s on a sinking ship and the best he can do is hope that the puffed up chests of terrified imbeciles — incapable of rationally calculating risk — will be enough to stave off the party’s complete submersion.
I’m seeing more and more traditionally GOP voters jumping ship. And when they jump, they aren’t merely stepping off. Most of them, clinging to hope, stayed too long, making their escaping leap all the more forceful.
Thursday’s Wall Street Journal noted that Congressional approval ratings are at their lowest level since they started taking the poll (lower even than in 1994, when Republicans swept the elections). Democrats are nationally favored by the widest margin since they started taking the poll. This ship is sinking… now it is only a matter of how many will drown.
