Sunday Morning Comin' Down II: Comin' Downier

While the most talked-about and irritating exchange at the Mouse Circus was Andrew Sullivan's most recent Sudden!Discovery! of something Liberals have been saying all along (link here) the creepiest exchange took place a little earlier on the same craptacular show between Mr. Sullivan and Bush Regime Dead-Ender Nichole Wallace:

SULLIVAN: And, of course, the big elephant in the room is that the Mitt Romney that showed up on October 3rd was like an alien that ripped off his mask and said, "I'm brand new now."

WALLACE: But we liked him. But we liked him.

WALLACE: Isn't that the point? You know, we liked him better.

As every Liberal I know has known since the beginning and as I wrote here back in June, Willard Romney's electoral strategy has always been brutally simple and straightforward:

Always. Be. Lying.

A-B-L.

A-always, B-be, L-lying.

Always be lying!

 Always! Be! Lying!

Romney is vulture capitalist enough to know his customers well.

Romney is smart enough to know that the typical GOP base voter from swamps of darkest Jebusland is no longer functionally human in some very important ways:  they have been trained not to notice or care if their leaders cripple the economy, trash the planet or shit directly in their faces every single day as long as they promise to make uppity, smart-ass Libruls suffer and to dispatch the Scary Black Man back to the depths of their most terrifying racial-inferiority nightmares.

Romney is also smart enough to know that the Beltway media -- who tell America's quivering, cowering Centrist minority what to think -- will let him skate on his lies because the Beltway media is a wholly corrupt institution devoted to defending elite establishment privilege and power and, as such, does not dare start calling out men like Romney no matter what they say or do.

Finally, Romney is smart enough to know that if he can pull in a big enough chunk of the willfully ignorant Center and all of the irredeemably depraved Right, he comes awfully close to the number of votes he needs to win the White House.

Which is why Mitt Romney will go on lying -- baldly, every day, about all kinds of shit -- right up until lying loses its marginal electoral utility.

The reason the back-and-forth between Mr. Sullivan and Ms. Wallace chilled me when I saw it (which is not conveyed by the mere words they swapped) was Ms. Wallace's literal giggling delight over the fact that her Party's strategy of just lying all the time was turning out perfectly (this captures the essence of her "Fuck you!" brio pretty well):

She was fucking thrilled that lying lying lying lying lying lying lying lying lying lying lying lying lying lying was working so beautifully. To Ms. Wallace, it simply does not matter what species of soulless vulture capitalist Cylon may be lurking beneath Willard Romney's chassis of lies, because 

WALLACE: ... whatever it is, is better than Obama.

In that sentence, I am once again reminded of the giddy, reptilian soul of Conservatism that Hunter Thompson captured here when he wrote about the 2000 election:

There was one exact moment, in fact, when I knew for sure that Al Gore would never be President of the United States, no matter what the experts were saying — and that was when the whole Bush family suddenly appeared on TV and openly scoffed at the idea of Gore winning Florida. It was Nonsense, said the Candidate, Utter nonsense… Anybody who believed Bush had lost Florida was a Fool. The Media, all of them, were Liars & Dunces or treacherous whores trying to sabotage his victory… Here was the whole bloody Family laughing & hooting & sneering at the dumbness of the whole world on National TV. The old man was the real tip-off. The leer on his face was almost frightening. It was like looking into the eyes of a tall hyena with a living sheep in its mouth...

In 2000, during the recounts, on the Democratic side Warren Christopher spoke of honor, democracy, the world stage and there being "no shame in putting country ahead of Party."

In 2000, during the recounts, on the Republican side, James Baker III took exactly the opposite view, telling his people that this was "a street fight for the Presidency of the United States."

The unforgivable error Mr. Sullivan commits over and over and over again is refusing to believe the evidence of his senses. Refusing the accept that such out-and-proud mendacity cannot be dissuaded by appeals to reason or conscience...because it rejects reason and conscience as impediments to power. That it will not be deterred by facts or history of the certainty of disaster if they are allowed back into power...because facts and history are for pussies and if we just believe hard enough in George W. Bush Willard Romney, everything will turn out great in the end.

Mr. Sullivan simply cannot get it through his head that a stake through their heart (in this case, humiliating them on camera would have been an adequate substitute) is the only thing that will get the job done.

Which is sorta hilarious when you considering that Mr. Sullivan spent most of his adult life helping to building this monster which now baffles and terrifies him so.

Over at his large site 'neath the sheltering bower of "Esquire" magazine, Mr. Charles P. Pierce covers some of the remaining denizens of this shitty waterfront, from the Leader (possibly) of the Civilizing Forces-- 

Almost nothing Gingrich said there is remotely true — "Virtually every Catholic" agrees with Mourdock about rape and abortion? That isn't true even for virtually every Virtual Catholic, like Gingrich — and, of course, the little shot at Cutter comes from long practice as a sick-wife-dumping misogynist. The Clinton Guy failed to point out any of this. I swear, there are moments when I think that, in terms of obvious cognitive abilities, the difference between The Clinton Guy and the Butter Cow is not vast.

-- to the obsessively asymmetriphobic David Brooks:

Brooksie is very disappointed in both men because they took him out once and failed to call.

Well, you know, I think — well, I first think it has been the worst campaign I've ever covered. And I think they're both ending on the same note they started. Obama's doing a negative campaign. He's got an ad out which is called "Rember," which is about Obama — which is about Romney, the plutocrat. It's about the flip-flop what we've just heard on the stump. So it's almost pure negativity. Romney is finishing, trying to appeal to moderates, trying to appeal to — to women, which is a bipartisan ad which is saying, you know, I don't care if it's a republican idea or democratic idea, I'm going to be for that. And, you know, so he has shape shift. That's not who he is. That's not who his policies are. So I regard this is an ad — as a campaign that has answered none of our fundamental issues about both these guys, how they would govern for next four years. And they are finishing as badly as they started.

One party is insane and has forced its candidate to act like the lead act in a $50 donkey contortionist show in a Tijuana brothel. The other candidate is forced to point this out. So it's everybody's fault. I feel for David Brooks, and for the gentle fairy-folk of the land in which he lives.