Hilarity Ensues

With loss and demographic changes come changes in immutable philosophies and natural law.

The Party of the "Obama Phone" and ignoring the 47% awakens, in an open, dewy field--refreshed, reborn, brand-new:

Romney adviser Carlos Gutierrez on 'State of the Union' this morning:

Crowley:  "You know what Mitt Romney has said...He was talking to group of donors and talking about the Obama campaign. He said that that 'he (Obama) went out and gave a lot of stuff to people that he hoped would go out and motivate them, specifically the African-American community, the Hispanic community and young people, he's talking here about the President's efforts to help those youngsters to who came in with undocumented parents. What do you make of that kind of argument?"

Gutierrez: (The 'Casablanca' reference too obvious to even be acknowledged in his tone): "I was shocked. I was shocked, and, frankly I don't think that's why the Republicans lost the election, why we lost the election. I think we lost the election because the far Right of this Party took us to a place where it doesn't belong. "

"We are the Party of prosperity, of growth, of tolerance! These immigrants who come across, and what they do wrong is they risk their lives, and they work because they want to be part of the American dream. That is what the GOP is!"

Crowley (slightly haltingly, embarrassed at having to phrase with delicacy the obvious): "And you would admit that your candidate said things that were anti-Latino, you yourself said that they (speeding up with emphasis at the sheer undeniability of it) feared the Republican Party and he was the head of it."

Gutierrez: (Over her): "Yeah..."

Crowley: "He failed at that."

Gutierrez: "And...and..that's true, and the unfortunate part, we were just talking about this, I don't know if he understood that he was saying something that was insulting."

Gutierrez is not to blame here, trying to grasp the sides of the gigantic, crumbling hole that Romney has created (though he may be at fault for climbing in with him).

The Kinsleyian definition of a political gaffe--telling the truth--has unmistakeably, unavoidably begun.

Romney likely didn't know that he was saying something insulting, so completely a part of his worldview is the notion that 47% of the nation are stereotypical takers.  

His barely disguised condescension; his willingness to say anything to a group of people whose judgment he held in contempt; his willingness to sell some idea, any idea, no matter how contradictory to the previous one, to win, all reflect his essential understanding of half of the nation: A hurdle, to be traversed by any means necessary, in order to put the ideas that he believed they could never grasp into effect.

He didn't know that people could comprehend his grasping insincerity. He didn't know--in fact, displayed a remarkable invulnerability--to absorbing any such knowledge, despite having intermingled with them, by necessity, for many months.

This remarkable degree of distance from understanding those unlike him--hardened as a personality style, unamenable to actual change throughout the long campaign--shows us with increasing clarity the danger to this nation that we avoided.

Now, as the Republican Party rushes to change the Potemkin storefront,  racing back to cover the rampant, overgrown tangle of its prior efforts to debase, tarnish and diminish; to whip up the base with the most extreme onslaughts--conspiratorial, false, the various manifestations and insinuations of the paranoid style--now, they wish to bring them back--to reality.

I would suggest that they do so gradually.

I suspect that not all will come willingly.

And I believe that what we will be left with is a facade--a smiling face with sharpened teeth, a more seductive pitch to lure the 47%, so blindly, clumsily handled, as if alien, by Romney, to the same place.