Republicans really, really hate this guy

(Jason Reed/Reuters)



A candidate “needs to have a warrior ethos to be the GOP nominee. They have to be a fighter, and they have to have some substance,” said Republican media strategist Rick Wilson. If Democrats suffered through “Bush Derangement Syndrome” during the last decade, Republican primary voters view the current president with near-contempt, thanks to the lousy economy and a liberal governing agenda. Obama’s unpopular health care law still is driving much of that anger. Wilson said he recently conducted a focus group where Republicans were asked whether, if they had a choice, they would rather “kill Obamacare” or have killed Osama bin Laden. “They would have killed Obamacare and waited for the actuarial tables [to] play out for bin Laden,” Wilson said.

In a National Journal piece about why Newt Gingrich is rising in spite of the rather glaring problem of him being, well, Newt Gingrich, there's this nugget

Now that is impressive. If given a choice between killing new health insurance laws or killing Osama bin Laden, they'd rather kill the health insurance laws? That takes a true commitment to being deranged. It was not that long ago that the War on Terror was the be-all, end-all of American patriotism. We passed laws, we broke laws, we started two wars—nothing else mattered. Want to kill an American citizen overseas without a trial? Go for it. Want to grant blanket immunity to telecom companies for illegal wiretapping? Hell yes, give 'em a blank check. We had/have a whole Patriot Act to tell us which things were and weren't patriotic, and it was a curious list indeed, but the one thing we knew was that al Qaeda was public enemy #1, an existential threat to America, and our fight against them was the single most important task "of our generation."

So compared to that existential danger, what could possibly be a bigger threat? Well, if you're a focus-group member of the Republican base, the thing that is even more dangerous than that is ... restricting companies from denying you health insurance based on preexisting conditions. Oh, and letting kids be on their parents' insurance policies for a longer period of time. You know, the serious stuff.

That's what's replaced the fight against terrorism for these Republicans. They'd rather Osama bin Laden be left alone rather than put up with that. Yowza. I knew "patriotism" was an odd and fickle thing, but let's all remember just how visceral the attacks used to be against anyone who even hinted that the War on Terrah was not worth shredding or reworking whatever aspects of the American existence might need to be shredded or reworked. Now we've got Republicans saying the War on Terror is no big deal, what we really need to do is go after the mean president's mean legislation. You know, the one that took ideas from Romney, Gingrich, the Heritage foundation and other conservatives in order to deliver a grand humping to the private insurance industry, the same industry that's been screwing over Americans spectacularly for decades. You know, the legislation that 1990's Republicans would have thought of as their best fantasies come true.

I think the problem here is that conservatism is based on being in constant pants-wetting terror over something, and Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda simply had stagnated to the point where they were no longer sufficiently terrifying. They were disenchanted: Their eyes started to wander, looking for something newer and fresher to whip into contenders for the pants-wetting prize, and after long flirtations with "is the president a secret Muslim" and "he's gonna take our guns and ammunition," they settled on death panels. Not just death panels, but the whole notion of secret government conspiracy to "come between you and your doctor," when everybody knows denying you needed healthcare for no good goddamn reason is the duty of private industry, not government. Nobody gives a damn about death panels when Blue Shield or some other insurance company has them on a daily basis, but couple that with secret Muslim president and you've maybe got something there that has sufficient pants-wetting potential to count as a new conservative rallying cry.

This actually has fantastic polling potential, since the list of current pants-wetting terrors facing Americans is, according to the GOP field, nearly endless. For example, amnesty for longtime immigrants. Would you rather prevent some brown people from getting amnesty, or would you rather kill Osama bin Laden? Would you rather, say, bust unions in Wisconsin, or defeat al Qaeda? And what about tax rates? Oh, there is some wonderful pants-wetting fodder in tax rates. Would you rather extend the Bush tax cuts for the top 1 percent of the nation, or would you rather kill Osama bin freaking Laden?

That the answers to those questions are no longer clear cut could be an example of lots of things, from the shallowness of the supposed War on Terror to the fleeting, flitting nature of supposed conservative ideological lynchpins, but considering that not one person in ten could tell you what "Obamacare" actually entails, aside from the now-shocking "mandate," I think it primarily shows that most of the Republican base are as dumb as rocks, and will wet their pants over whatever you tell them to.