None Of The Above

This morning, a handful of Rubio boosters are sharing a video contrasting a gotcha question from an 18-year old student fielded by Chris Christie against a question from a nine-year old kid fielded by Marco Rubio.

Of course, the problem is one of substance.  The point being made is that Christie is a bully picking on an 18 year old “girl” while Rubio is so positive, so endearing… I mean, what a meanie Christie is to that “girl” who just wanted to ask a question was throwing gotcha questions in what has sadly become politics today.

I’m sick of it.

Truth be told, I don’t blame any of the candidates.  They’re only catering to our tastes after all.  But after the summer (and fall) of Trump followed by the Winter of GOP Discontents, I can’t help but feel utterly disheartened when people — some of whom I believe to be reasonable — give in to their passions and emotions.  What possible good does it do to rage at Trump’s idiocracy, then spin around and adopt the very same tactics in favor of your own candidate?

Oh sure, it’s a difference of substance.  Our candidate is the last and best hope for Western Civilization; their candidate is the antithesis of everything the Founders stood for.  My candidate is a great guy; their candidate is a crass barbarian.  Tactics applied in service to our ends is noteworthy and good politics; the same tactics applied with the pointy-end aimed at our guys is soulless and wrong.

Enough.

At what point do we collectively as voters figure out that we’re being played?

At what point do we figure out that marketers and PR executives and psychologists have poured millions of dollars in getting you (yes you) to react first and think later?

At what point do we figure out that such emotions, when we act upon them, create investment that makes it harder for us to retract a bad opinion formed — not by ourselves — but constructed for us by someone else?

At what point do we get really upset about that?

At what point do we figure out that this — all of this — is for the gain of the few in the mirage of public interest or that pernicious term “the greater good” as opposed to the common good?

At what point do we figure out that certain elites — both parties — have zero interest in helping our grandfathers and grandmothers, our aunts and uncles who might be out of work, our brother who has come home from Iraq, our sister who is struggling to make ends meet as a single mother, or the education for our children that might actually prepare them for the 21st century in some way that doesn’t shackle them to debt in the same way folks were shackled to a factory bench or a spade and plow before that?

At what point do we refuse to collectively assent to this process?

At what point do we tell folks like this to go to hell?  When do we figure it out?

When a candidate reflexively repeats the same hashed out talking point four times on national television, that should bother us.  20 years ago, it might have.  40 years ago, we would have treated it with contempt.  But now?  Yet again, when a candidate carts people out of an arena, that should bother us (as should the idea of “hecklers” and Alinskyite tactics infiltrating the conservative movement).  When conservatism is on the ropes and populism looks ready to supplant it, that should alarm everyone.

And when series of candidates demean their own base, lies to the public about the true condition of the country, paints great conservatives as weenie moderates, climbs the ladder of advantage rather than accomplishment, or outright slanders and cheats their way to the nomination… well, are we really going to reward that?

Of course we are.  We always do.

Democracies elect the leaders they deserve, and for as much as we might rail against our politicians, they are only catering to our appetites, our desires, our selves.

Want to know why we will never see Ronald Reagan rise in the Republican Party again?  Because we don’t deserve him.  We gunned that fella (or lady) down a long time ago.

Citizens simply don’t behave as we do.  Mobs might, but not free citizens, and I sorely wish that folks would realize the difference in the pursuit of “principle” which too often today just means whatever someone really wants at any specific given point in time.

Maybe my fellow Virginians will come to expect more from the national cacophony that seems to have replaced political discourse at the national level?  One can only hope.  The alternative isn’t exactly appealing.

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