Rick Perlstein has his usual great piece up at Rolling Stone, his regular digs these days. And as is often the case, there's almost too much to like.
He makes a great point about how Romney's Mormonism won't eventually matter; you can read it just for that (I happen to agree with him). Or you can read it for the interesting history of the anti-Roe campaign (psst: evangelicals had to be organized into opposing Roe). I may write that up later.
My focus today is this great catch near the end. Here's a perfect example of how the right wing confounds its opposition (us). They are extremely professional. I call it "using the fog" (my emphasis and reparagraphing):
Not so long ago, a black man marrying a blond woman was a lynching offense among American reactionaries; now we have a black man, a reactionary himself, married to a blond woman, on the Supreme Court.Clarence Thomas lost us in the fog, didn't he? At least he lost the leaders of the Democratic party opposition. Then he scampered to the goal, where he'll live till he dies.
I like to imagine, as a thought experiment, the day, perhaps not too far off, when a Republican president nominates a Supreme Court Justice married to someone of the same sex, maybe even with the sanction of "orthodox" theology – with that gay Supreme Court justice casting the deciding vote that finally overturns Roe vs. Wade. It could happen. When the siren song of cobelligerency beckons, theological qualms tend to fall away. That's the way it's always been.
Lost in the fog — If I was a strategist on the right, this is how I'd play it every time. They only have to throw us off balance briefly — we buy the stutter-step and quit running, they race past us to the goal — which is all they every care about in the world.
As my old Uncle Straight Talk used to say (who's much more direct than yours truly) — "Do they care about blacks? They care about winning. Do they care about gays? They care about winning. Do they care about women? They care about winning. Got that, son?"
Uncle Straight Talk knew a thing or two: They care about nothing else in the world. Why is that hard to respond to?
They lose us in the fog which they create. It's such a simple tactic — and folks, so easy to defeat. It doesn't matter if the fog is gayness, blackness ... or women-helping-women-fighting-cancer–ness (even if only 24% of the monster haul goes to Research and the rest of it funds everything else).
The fog is the fog; easy to spot. If you see the fog, and you see the knife, always watch the knife.
Simple, yes?
GP
