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Dave Weigel, at Slate, on the True Believers’ eagerness to force their guy into losing:
In May of 1970, when he was a young former journalist working for the White House, Pat Buchanan offered President Richard Nixon some tips that he’d never stop using. “I strongly endorse symbolic gestures toward groups,” wrote Buchanan, “especially the blacks where symbols count for so much.” In order to divide the country effectively, Nixon had to pretend that he wasn’t dividing it at all. “The President is President of all the people and while they will never vote for us, we must never let them come to believe we don’t give a damn about them—or that they are outside our province of concern.”
Forty-two years and four months later, an older, more widow’s-peaked Buchanan appeared on Fox News to explain the leaked video of Mitt Romney talking to donors. Had Romney stumbled when he wrote off the “47 percent” of voters too dependent to vote Republican? No, said Buchanan. “Barack Obama is a drug dealer of welfare. He wants permanent dependency, in my judgment, of all these folks.”
Spot the difference! The younger, wiser Buchanan argued that a president (presidential candidate, in this case) should avoid telling voters just how much he needs them to splinter if he’s going to win. The new Buchanan, who’s been a pundit since Paul Ryan was listening to Led Zeppelin on a Walkman, is ready for a guns-a-blazing debate about lazy moochers versus broad-shouldered job creators.
It’s not just Buchanan saying this. As the “47 percent” saga drags on, a sizable group of conservatives are telling Romney to stand by the argument. Romney is standing by it, which is probably the best of a bunch of bad options. First of all, what would he gain if he said he was lying to a bunch of gullible rich people? And second, there’s a team of conservatives giving him terrible advice, telling him to make a general election message out of this story…
Doghouse Riley, with the shorter:
… Let’s just say it plainly: Mitt Romney is not smart enough to be President of the United States. Paul Ryan is not smart enough to be Vice President of the United States. And that’s taking into consideration the last pair the Republican party and its Court subsidiary foisted on us. And it’s taking into consideration the fact that both men are professional liars, and likely personally dishonest into the bargain. There’s lying, and then there’s lying in such a way that you register enough contempt for the listener to not be bothered with good lies.
This is the Republican party. It’s the Republican party since 1980, the Republican party since the time it lied its way past Watergate, lied its way past Vietnam and Civil Rights, and decided that lying was the key to a shining future. This is the party which has believed, since the Ascension of St. Ronnie, that advertising plus money was not only more powerful than the truth, it was better than the truth. Even smart Republicans have to see, now, what that’s got them. Assuming there are any.
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