Still Not Worried About 2010

...but Steve at NMMNB is, and he may have a point.

This is the important point: there doesn't seem to be any downside to declaring yourself a card-carrying insaniac. We kept waiting all through August for there to be a broad-based backlash in response to the right's town hall excesses -- it never happened. We keep waiting for there to be broad-based revulsion at the idiot McCarthyism and unhinged emotionality of Glenn Beck -- it hasn't happened. We keep waiting for broad-based disgust at remarks like Congresswoman Virginia Foxx's assertion that "we have more to fear from the potential of" health care reform "than we do from any terrorist right now in any country" -- it's not happening, and it's not gonna happen.

Rachel Maddow-watching, Huffington Post-reading smarty-pantses like us know instantly what's wrong with what these people are saying, but the rest of America -- i.e, about 90+ percent of America -- doesn't. They just know they don't like the status quo. Any anti-status-quo rant that seems to have logic and coherence and patriotism, even it's wrong in every particular, seems, to a huge percentage of Americans, sincere and well-meant at least and thoroughly persuasive at most.

That's why we put out stories that say, "Look, Doug Hoffman is a card-carrying Beck groupie" -- and wait for the backlash in vain. It's not coming -- any more than it came in response to the tea parties and town halls.

Most Americans simply don't have a script in their heads that portrays this sort of thing as beyond the pale. They certainly have a script like that in their heads for our side. More than one script, really -- the DFH script, the tax-and-spend-liberal script, the angry-black-militant script, and the angry-bitch script to name a few. (On that last one, seen Nancy Pelosi's approval ratings lately?) It's easy for there to be an instant backlash against a leftist or liberal or Democrat. On our side, though, we wait and wait, and the backlash never happens.

We actually need to explain to the broad public why Glenn Beck is beyond the pale, or why Virginia Foxx is. We need to build a these-people-are-nuts argument from scratch. The general public (except possibly with regard to religious-right types, or Sarah Palin, and her mostly because she seems stupid) just doesn't have a well-cultivated idea of why these people are anything other than what they say they are, namely passionate patriots.

In other words, the Teabaggers are out there causing damage because right now they are the only vocal opposition to the status quo. There's no middle ground because the Teabaggers are in the process of annihilating it and they are counting on "Well, at least they aren't Obama" as victory through indifference.

He's got a point. Teabaggers are crazy to me, but that's simply not self-evident to a lot of people. Ron Paul's the best example of this. He had some good things to say ("Audit the Fed!, end the wars!") and he had a cool blimp. but you had to do some research to figure out the other 70% of Ron Paul's stuff was crackpot lunacy.

Americans don't want to invest even cursory interest in their political world outside of sound bites and scandals. You have to cut the rancid steak for them before they'll take a nibble and spit it out, otherwise they'll just say "wrap it up and I'll take it home for dinner."

Me, I personally think the Teabaggers are so crazy they'll beat themselves with their Purgepocalypse. In the meanwhile however, we'll end up with more idiots like Bachmanniac and her merry band of know-nothing mouth-breathers.

We've got a lot of work to do.