Revisiting a post that I wrote a few days back, I noted that the YouTube debate seemed to offer a fairly unfiltered encounter between candidates and The Base. If the Democratic Base was as loopy as blogosphere right seems to think it is then there should have been some cringemoments, yet yet that really didn’t happen. The guy stroking his gun creeped me out a bit, but maybe it’s just because I come from a middle class urban area where normal people don’t do that.
Maybe Cooper filtered out the wild-eyed A.N.S.W.E.R. activists wanting to know why we don’t surrender to the terrorists like, TODAY, but I doubt it. I’ve never met anybody like that and I doubt that they exist in significant numbers.
The GOP base, though, strikes me as another story. Look at John’s post below – even among the mainstream every issue seems to bring an undercurrent of anger and violence. The idea of stringing up liberals, war critics, apostate Republicans as traitors seeps into every forum. They love torture, they hate civil rights and long ago the right’s mainstream leaders declared the entire religion of Islam a free-fire zone. Better still, six years of holding government in a headlock has left these guys with a sense that they’re entitled to say all this without apology or self-consciousness.
Letting through one or a few of Charles Johnson’s true believers could put the GOP candidates in a mighty bind. Either reject the idea of nuking Tehran and lose the surprisingly large number of Republicans who think that is a smart idea, or horrify the rest of America. With hardline GOP policies polling behind Democrats across the board there are dozens of possible Sophie’s Choices to make the candidates squirm.
Hence it doesn’t really surprise me that the GOPers with the most to lose have started planning for withdrawal . Unlike, say, Ron Paul, Rudy benefits more the less he spends in close contact with The Base. I don’t doubt that Romney would prefer not to field questions from a guy in a Flipper suit. Running away from a debate won’t count as the bravest moment in either of these candidates’ lives, but you could see it coming.
***Update***
Credit where credit is due, the always entertaining Blogs for Brownback has a prior use claim on my post title.
Also, three posts from Josh Marshall indicate that the orderly YouTube withdrawal may have devolved into a precipitous bugout. If I was Rudy I wouldn’t want to face firefighters either, and you can guess the kind of antics that will be aimed at Romney. But what does Fred Thompson have to be afraid of? Maybe he doesn’t want to talk about his fling with pro-choicers, who knows. These guys aren’t ready for prime time.
cleek
that’s why you won’t see any tough questions. it’ll be a bucket of softballs, with most of them answered by irrelevant snippets from campaign speeches.
and if they do choose to please the base, well, we’ve already had “double-gitmo” and nobody outside the leftosphere seems to care.
mclaren
This presumes that the drunk-driving C student in the Oval Office won’t already have nuked Tehran before November 2008. 6 years ago that kind of insanity would be unthinkable, but it’s a whole different ball game now.
jake
Gee Tim, do you mean that these cretins are reaping the results of appealing to people’s basest (NPI) instincts?
To quote another brilliant British comedy: O. Woe.
The best part is the candidates who do show up can score a lot of points on the Like 2 Have a Drink w/U meter by saying they’re willing to talk with the American people, unlike their opponents.
If they cancel the whole thing the points go to the Democratic Cand. who grabs them first.
arnott
off topic !
what is going on ? what happened to Pat Tillman ? People have no shame, or any pride, how can they let something like this happen ? Tillman must have felt he entered the evil Twilight zone.
Tillman story on yahoo
Psycheout
You stole my line, you foul leftist. At least give credit where credit is due, Tim.
And I can’t help but notice that you haven’t exposed the controversy of Clinton’s cleavage. Typical. Are you trying to cover something up? Actually I wish you would.
Just like Cindy Sheehan, the Clinton harlot is yours.
Punchy
Speaking of Romney, according to TPM, he and Jewly-Anny and Freddy T have all bailed on this YouTube debate format.
Marshall just excoriates them in a mocking tone, noting what we all recognized: that they are simply unable to take unscripted questions from the pyschotic, racist, xenophobic 25%ers.
jake
When a 7-4-7 did land on his head,
Brave Sir Romney was horribly …
Never mind.
Tim F.
Punchy, do you read posts before commenting?
Blue Neponset
Ha!! I can’t wait to hear how the wingnuts defend this. They were all up in arms about the Dems passing on the Fox News debate.
The Other Steve
Not surprising. Republicans are cowards.
Joel Lemieux
I use to have compassion for individuals who were “brainwashed” by the likes of Bush/Chenney, “Rudi McRomney” and cousin “Freddie” Plus Dem Relatives “Obama” and “Hillary” (all of them CFR Globalist?)… However, now I can only feel sorry for them…
Punchy
Nah. Some of us have jobs.
Dreggas
I was looking forward to this one, kind of like how I was looking forward to Jesus Camp, looking at the world of the nutjobs from outside the bars.
This is the real reason these guys are bailing. After all the guy claiming his M-4 SopMod was his baby was a one off question for dems, for the republicans it will be non-stop and even worse.
If America tuned in to watch they’d see the underbelly of this country up close and personal, and see who they support, it would further ruin their electoral chances. Plus can you see Guiliani having to answer a question from someone in east bumfuck egypt about protectin’ the snowlflake fetus’ from bein turned into man-beasts?
Psycheout
Thanks for the update. I hereby withdraw the “foul” part of my comment. :-D
bago
The Base has been sheltered in backwater comunities where the difference between what you said to a local and to an outsider are vastly different. The internet destroys that by destroying the difference between local an outsider. This completely underscuts the ruling clique idea.
You can plug your ears and say LA_LA_LA_LA_LA, but that doesn’t help you when trying to accurately deal with a situation.
Throwing out all data you don;t like leads you to make very bad judgements.
global citizen
I saw an excerpt from this post on TPM and have made similar comments myself here and there. It is a very important point. If most Americans fully appreciated just how crazy much of the Republican base is, the Republican party would be obliterated in a national election.
The Democrats and all concerned need to repeat over and over: why will Republican candidates, like the incumbant President, not answer questions, or even listen to questions, from ordinary Americans in public? Is this why they are seemingly oblivious to views regarding the war in Iraq and urgent needs like health care and fair taxation. Do they only listen to the rich and to rich media owners who distort (or do not even know) the truth — distort it for their own obvious purposes? Is that 2 or 3% of the population and their lobbyists the only people the Republican party cares about???
Jinchi
Giuliani: I would tell the military to use every bomb they could think of, it shouldn’t be nuclear, but enhanced explosive devices, absolutely.
Libvet
Tim F.
High praise for you. You’re right. Questions from Freeper types would scare everybody! LOL.
Thanks. That was a brilliant insight.
LibVet
Brad
“The guy stroking his gun creeped me out a bit, but maybe it’s just because I come from a middle class urban area where normal people don’t do that.”
Stroking his gun? I saw the segment in question and all the guy did was reach off screen, bring the rifle into view and then rest the buttstock on the floor, is that what is mean by ‘stroking his gun’? Riiiight.
I was amused by the fact that Biden flipped out over someone holding a rifle that was directly compliant with the very law Biden was championing! The AR rifle was a post-ban model, modified to comply with the 1994 “assault-weapon” ban. Yet Biden was too stupid and too reflexively anti-gun to recognize the product of his own legislative efforts.
skippy
but what does fred thompson have to be afraid of?
could it be lesbians?