Never Ever Again

John Baron

You have give it to them. The GOP is nothing if not resilient. After two consecutive defeats by the forces of the left, the far right-wing elements in American society continue to find expression. Putting a baby face on your candidate and dressing him up in verbiage about the changing of the generations increases your appeal to the youth vote, butt they are still far right ideologues with a far right view of the world and if they ever get elected again they will do irreparable damage to life as we know it.

Now that the hyperbole is gone. John is being a good journalist, writing a balanced piece, marketable but not really saying much. He implies that there is a ghost of a chance of the republicans winning. An objective observer would have to think that the tea-party-policies of the far right could never attract sufficient votes of a rational-cognitive electorate. But let's not be surprised ever again. The electorate in the US is a tiny proportion of the voting public, because the mere act of voting is not compulsory, so almost anything could still happen.

We in Australia are, right now, as the US did in the dubya years, experiencing the consequences of electoral complacency, and the assumption that the electorate (as distinct from the voting public) will act in a rational manner. The cringe quality of Friar Tuck is so reminiscent of that arroused by George dubya himself, that I have to take anti-cringe medication every time I watch the news. If we don't cringe we are tempted to succumb to fits of hysterical laughter, and/or outright ridicule.

Yet these are our elected leaders.