Where Were You When I Laid

the foundations of the Earth?

Why is Newton Leroy winning the GOP battle of the bands?

Because he built the damn bandstand.

In the 1990s he framed out the terms under which the 2012 GOP nomination is being fought -- hatred, paranoia , megalomania, Jebus -- and furnished the "Traitor!Traitor!Traitor!" vocabulary that all the other freaks in the freak show are using.

Because after decades of careful conditioning, it is the only vocabulary which the homunculi Base is capable of hearing.

For future generations of little kids who will need to know what happened back when American went mad, I wrote this story -- "Little Red State Fundy" -- back in 2005.

For the Conservatives -- both Apostate and Brahman -- who are now wailing and gnashing their teeth over the possibility of Newt Fucking Gingrich being the standard bearer for the GOP next year, what is there left to say but...

....we told you so.

Holy Mother of God did we ever tell you so.

Over and over again. Begged you to listen. Begged you to stop and consider what long-term horrors you were visiting on this country in exchange having your bigot G-spot stroked.

And you told us to fuck off.

Told us to shut up.

Called us traitors and liars, cowards and crazy, Commies and Fifth Columnists. Many of you still call us these things, letting all those lovely, bile-soaked words that Newt Fucking Gingrich and his Pretty Hate Machine bequeathed to you roll eff-ort-less-ly off your tongue.

Because in the Beginning were the Words: the words that advanced your agendas, elected your candidates and built your careers. The words to which you owe everything.

And now that the Author of the script that permitted you to prosper has come for his due, I can think of no literary quotation more appropriate to the occasion that Yahweh's admonition to Job from my favorite book of the Bible:

Then the LORD answered Job out of the storm. He said:

"Who is this that darkens my counsel
with words without knowledge?
Brace yourself like a man;
I will question you,
and you shall answer me.

“Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation?
Tell me, if you understand.
Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know!
Who stretched a measuring line across it?
On what were its footings set,
or who laid its cornerstone—
while the morning stars sang together
and all the angels[a] shouted for joy?

“Who shut up the sea behind doors
when it burst forth from the womb,
when I made the clouds its garment
and wrapped it in thick darkness,
when I fixed limits for it
and set its doors and bars in place,
when I said, ‘This far you may come and no farther;
here is where your proud waves halt’?

“Have you ever given orders to the morning,
or shown the dawn its place,
that it might take the earth by the edges
and shake the wicked out of it?
The earth takes shape like clay under a seal;
its features stand out like those of a garment.
The wicked are denied their light,
and their upraised arm is broken.

“Have you journeyed to the springs of the sea
or walked in the recesses of the deep?
Have the gates of death been shown to you?
Have you seen the gates of the deepest darkness?
Have you comprehended the vast expanses of the earth?
Tell me, if you know all this.

“What is the way to the abode of light?
And where does darkness reside?
Can you take them to their places?
Do you know the paths to their dwellings?
Surely you know, for you were already born!
You have lived so many years!

“Have you entered the storehouses of the snow
or seen the storehouses of the hail,
which I reserve for times of trouble,
for days of war and battle?
What is the way to the place where the lightning is dispersed,
or the place where the east winds are scattered over the earth?
Who cuts a channel for the torrents of rain,
and a path for the thunderstorm,
to water a land where no one lives,
an uninhabited desert,
to satisfy a desolate wasteland
and make it sprout with grass?
Does the rain have a father?
Who fathers the drops of dew?
From whose womb comes the ice?
Who gives birth to the frost from the heavens
when the waters become hard as stone,
when the surface of the deep is frozen?

“Can you bind the chains of the Pleiades?
Can you loosen Orion’s belt?
Can you bring forth the constellations in their seasons
or lead out the Bea with its cubs?
Do you know the laws of the heavens?
Can you set up God’s[e] dominion over the earth?

“Can you raise your voice to the clouds
and cover yourself with a flood of water?
Do you send the lightning bolts on their way?
Do they report to you, ‘Here we are’?
Who gives the ibis wisdom
or gives the rooster understanding?
Who has the wisdom to count the clouds?
Who can tip over the water jars of the heavens
when the dust becomes hard
and the clods of earth stick together?

“Do you hunt the prey for the lioness
and satisfy the hunger of the lions
when they crouch in their dens
or lie in wait in a thicket?
Who provides food for the raven
when its young cry out to God
and wander about for lack of food?

And for the less Old Testamently inclined, Charlie Pierce unloads his formidable boomstick in the same general direction here:

No, Andrew, you're wrong. The crisis in the Republican party is not that Newt Gingrich is leading the polls for the presidential nomination, while Willard Romney continues to be the flailing foof he's been since he entered public life. The crisis is not that David (Axis of Evil, Ask My Wife) Frum, or Charles (Friend of Death Squads) Krauthammer, or George Effing Will are clutching their pearls at the prospect of a national convention held entirely in the Newtiverse. The crisis is not that Gingrich is more than a contender. The crisis in the Republican party began when it made Newt Gingrich a national figure in the first place. The intellectual dry-rot set deep in the heartwood back then. In 1994, Newt Gingrich was no less a fraud, no less for sale, no less an intellectual snake-oil salesman, no less an adulterous hypocrite than he will be when he steps on the stage Saturday in Des Moines for the 6,795th of 8,761 scheduled GOP presidential debates. You may not have liked Gingrich's personal style back then — Mr. Will seems enormously displeased with the fact that Gingrich fails to recognize Will's own tinpot erudition as more authentic than his own — but you all loved the results he got...

Frum, Sullivan, Krauthammer, Will and all the rest of them had better pray for mercy.

Because justice would sting like a bitch.