A year ago, when Barack Obama was inaugurated, the Serious, Responsible people who appear on Sunday-morning talk shows agreed that, if it wanted to survive, the Republican Party needed to stop letting men like Barbour appear as its public face. The election of 2008 was not just about parties trading off power. It marked the end of an epoch. No longer could Republicans count on the basic conservatism of the American people, the reflexive hostility to candidates who favor big government. The electorate had changed: white Reaganites and religious conservatives no longer held sway. Now the power lay in the growing Hispanic population and all those teeming masses of idealistic people, yearning for something cool.
Right. They wanted “something cool.” They certainly didn’t want, say, universal health care, or immigration reform, or an end to the war in Iraq, or economic stimulus, or a vice president who wasn’t completely insane. They just wanted to be hip, and ironic moustaches weren’t doing it for them anymore, so thank God Barack Obama came along.
I also like the bit about how it’s not that Republicans can’t allow backwards-ass Confederate-humping dicks like Barbour to set policy, they just can’t put him in front of the cameras. He can’t be their public face. Keep him in the basement where he belongs.
A.