The pixels had barely faded from the TV and computer screens from the reports of Obama’s victory Tuesday night before the Republicans started blaming everyone but their own candidate for his abysmal defeat. Actually, Republican operatives and conservative media pundits had already set the table for this finger-pointing fest days (if not weeks) before the election, with the wholesale abandonment of the Republican ship by such previously reliable “rats” as Bill Kristol, Peggy Noonan, Christopher Buckley and David Brooks.
You heard it, didn’t you? It was the economy’s fault. It
was George Bush’s fault (you know, the inconvenient Republican), it was Sarah
Palin’s fault, and, of course, the old standby: it was the media’s fault. No
mention of McCain’s abandonment of the “straight talk” of his earlier
incarnations, his flip-flops from positions that made him tolerable enough to
Democrats (and, therefore, attractive to independents and “swing” voters) to
have been mentioned as a possible running mate to Kerry in ’04, and certainly no
responsibility taken for running one of the slimiest campaigns since the one
Bush ran against McCain in 2000. Oh no, none of that accounted for the
“thumping” (to use the term even Bush recognized as characterizing his party’s
loss in the 2006 mid-term elections) that McCain (and the rest of his party)
suffered at the hands of the “Obamarama Express.” I’m surprised I haven’t heard
the words “vast left-wing conspiracy” uttered by any of the Republican
apologists.
Perhaps the funniest statement of absolution by the
Republicans for their blamelessness in the carnage represented by their loss was
mouthed, not surprisingly, by the sacrificial-lamb-in-chief of the Republican
campaign, Sarah Palin, who said
(and I kid you not, this is a direct quote): “I know that I know that I know
that there was nothing done wrong in the campaign.” It’s hard to tell whether
she was channeling Bill
Withers or Donald
Rumsfeld in that statement.
It truly amazes me (though it shouldn’t) that the party
that likes to tout the virtues of personal responsibility (like blaming the
victims of predatory lending practices for incurring mortgages that had time
bombs embedded in them) wasn’t capable of practicing what it preaches. Then
again, look at its titular leader these past eight years. Asked to admit to any
mistakes he had made during his tenure, he was hard-pressed to come up with even
one (other than the rhetorical “bring ’em on,” his cowboy-esque response to the Iraqi
insurgents).
But, then again, this kind of buck passing isn’t entirely
unique to Republicans. After all, haven’t Democrats been blaming the corrupted
election process, and third-party candidates, for its losses in the last two
national elections, without, even once, admitting their own responsibility for
running two of the worst campaigns in political history? Had the results in ’00
and ’04 even approached the size of the Obama victory (as many thought they
should have), Republican electoral shenanigans couldn’t have come close to
“stealing” those elections. If this election proves one thing about the dangers
of electoral manipulation, it’s that there is, after all, safety in numbers.
As far as I’m concerned, the Republicans can continue with
their “circular firing squad” blame spree forever. The longer they continue to
gorge themselves on delusion, deflection and denial, and the longer the
consequent disarray their party suffers, the firmer the grasp of what is,
hopefully, a newly resurgent progressive movement will be on the politics of
this country, and the less likely we will ever be to suffer the indignities
visited on us by the likes of another George W. Bush.
