Shut Up and Go Away by KTK

It’s been a hard transition for the GOP, that much is obvious. If they deserved it, I’d almost feel sorry for them, but mostly I’m just reminded of the subway rats I sometimes see lying in rancid pools on the tracks, kicking their legs in spastic agony while the strychnine does its necessary cleansing work. Who’s got sympathy to spare for that?

They’re hurting, though, it’s very clear. They just don’t seem to get it, yet – it hasn’t sunk in that they don’t run things and nobody cares what they think. There’s an almost palpable sense of displacement – a sense that, because big events are taking place in the world, they should be part of them. It’s obviously frustrating, but also, seemingly . . . confusing . . . that somebody else is setting military policy, managing the economic crisis, issuing orders and talking to foreign leaders.

So we have Karl Rove in the right-wing Op-Eds every week, weighing in on what Obama ought to do as if, somehow, Obama were the craven puppet Rove is used to manipulating, and was actually paying attention to what Rove says. (I’d put money on the proposition that Obama hasn’t read a single Rove opinion piece since the election. I certainly haven’t.) Cheney is issuing foreign-policy statements . . . to right-wing bloggers – the only ones who still think he matters. Bill Kristol – who racked up 4 official retractions, in an opinion column, in just one year at the NY Times – has been let go; he remains the only person in the world surprised at this.  David Brooks has been releasing bizarrely unironic laments about the “Masters of the Universe” who used to “set their own norms” but now are at the mercy of civil servants who resent them for, among other things, their . . . “cleavage”. (Yes . . . really.) He’s just beside himself – and apparently quite sincerely so – that people who take government service seriously and don’t kowtow to wealth and self-indulgence on the scale of the Roman emperors are now making policy in a real effort to actually do some good for people who exhibit “middle class drabness” (yes, again . . . really).

The rest of the bunch is just as lost. The GOP hierarchy, watching history’s taillights pull away from them at an ever-faster pace, scrambled to gin up a high-profile African-American of their own, after their front-runner for party Chair made headlines with his clever “Greatest Racist Hits” CD; they settled for perennial also-ran Michael Steele on the 6th ballot, 5 votes ahead of a guy who waited to resign his lifetime membership in a country club with an official whites-only policy until newspapers reported it two months before he announced his candidacy, then ran on a platform of . . . his history of racial inclusion. (Yes . . . really.) The GOP Congressional “Conservative Working Group” met yesterday with Joe the Plumber to plan legislative strategy. (Yes . . . really.) Sarah Palin, who has been making the rounds of right-wing groups for the past month, is now in a war of dueling press releases with . . . Ashley Judd . . . over her habit of shooting wolves from helicopters. I swear I’m not making any of this up.

Oh, god . . . irrelevancy never came too soon for this bunch of childish cranks and losers. But they’re having a very hard time getting used to it. It’s almost sad. But . . . not.