Tea Party Candidates Elected, Comedians Rejoice

In answer to Jon Stewart’s query last night regarding the Tea Party’s unexpected sweep of down-ballot elections, “How are the Democrats going to fuck this up?” I’m going to go with “overconfidence.”

But then I had to turn off his show because the host and actor Jon Hamm were beginning a spoiler-heavy interview I didn’t hear before I saw the movie they were discussing. So I switched back to the TV and there was a documentary on the life of legendary Holocaust survivor and Nazi hunter Elie Wiesel, including interviews with Wiesel himself. Wiesel was talking about the pre-war years; going to college, falling in love… yes, I was about to turn the channel.

But then he mentioned an experience he had on the street of the European city he was attending college in. I backed up the program and wrote down what he said:

“It was a speech of Hitler on the radio. Before he came to power. And [out of] all the windows, on the street, came this speech of Hitler. I said, ‘Ach, this impossible. This man cannot have a chance, in a country of philosophers, of thinkers, of inventors.’”

Okay, first, I am not comparing any Tea Party candidate to Hitler, or the party to Nazism, either. Let’s get that out of the way.

The only comparison of Hitler and Palin that isn’t breathless hyperbole is that, come on, both are really shitty choices of people to sit at the head of your government. Alaska gave Palin a chance and she rewarded their trust by bailing half-way through her first term. Whatever her reasons were, if you judge a candidate by their track record, you’d be a pure fool to vote for Palin again. What if she became President but then American Idol called and offered more money and an easier schedule to be head celebrity fuckwit on their freak show?

If I was running the corner McDonald’s and both interviewed for the same fry-cook position, I’d hire my little sister before I’d hire Sarah Palin. Figure at least she’d show up to work till she and her mouthpiece decided what to sue me for.

Oops. Major digression.

My point is—and I had one when I started, anyhow—is that almost all the left-leaners I know are rejoicing at the sudden lunatic-fringe tilt of the GOP and I think they’re making a HUGE mistake. That’s why I picked “overconfidence,” above, as the manner in which I’m wagering the Dems will shoot themselves in the collective dick this year.

I’ve been reading up on Reconstruction-era America recently, when all the big-city big-thinkers scoffed at the lunacy of the notion of the President letting the Old South re-form in the aftermath of the Civil War, but that’s exactly what Johnson did. (Fucker deserved to be impeached.)

My point is, we elect crazy motherfuckers all the time! The best we can do is hope they’re crazy on our side. If Obama, like Carter before him, has a key failing, it’s lack of crazy. Bush had plenty of crazy and got lots of shit done. Mostly awful, unhelpful shit, but history will not soon forget the name of George Walker Bush.

And that’s the problem with Tea Party Crazy is that, like Bush Jr., it’s an empty crazy. Just waiting to be filled with policy and program agendas put forth by their deep-pocket donors, just like Bush was.

Because most of these winning candidates have literally no platforms at all, only sweeping bromides based on gut-checked but un-thought-out ideas. And stuff they’ve heard Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity say. Or heard in a sermon on Sunday morning.

The Tea Party candidates also have rock-solid fan bases, whipped up by the scary times we live in and the megaphone Fox News gives those scary times. When even Karl Rove says one of the Tea Partiers is “too extreme,” my Mom just tells me that Karl Rove is out of step.

The Tea Party base has not only drunk the Kool-Aid, but put little red, white and blue cocktail umbrellas in too because it makes it look classier. Come hell or high water, they can be counted on to show up at the polling place on election day.

So remember, historically speaking, we elect crazy people and idiots all the time. The Founding Fathers were considered crazed idiots (and worse) in their day, till they won the Revolutionary War. Lincoln was supposed to be crazy, too, till he won his war.

We laugh off these lunatic-fringe loose cannons at our own peril. The fact that their political fortunes are rising just as the fall election approaches isn’t the sound of a rim shot that accompanies a punchline, it’s a tolling bell.