Wish I'd Written This

All hail to Hendrik Hertzberg of The New Yorker magazine, who in the March 5 “Talk of the Town” section described the Republican “base” to which the candidates are appealing as follows:

"…an excitable, overlapping assortment of Fox News friends, Limbaugh dittoheads, Tea Party animals, war whoopers, nativists, Christianist fundamentalists, a la carte Catholics (anti-abortion, yes; anti-torture, mo) anti-Rooseveltians (Franklin and Theodore), global warming deniers, post-Confederate white Southerners, creationists, birthers, market idolaters, Europe demonizers, and gun fetishists..”

I think this pretty much explains how Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich have gotten as far as they have, playing to that base. Mitt’s not far behind, denying his past and cozying up to this “base.”

I have learned not to overestimate the intelligence of the American voters who gave Bush a second term, so I don’t assume that common sense will prevail.