The Last Word On The Right's Glory In Defeat

Paul Krugman's column today allows me to not have to say another word on the childish behavior of the right over Chicago not receiving the 2016 Olympics bid:

“Cheers erupted” at the headquarters of the conservative Weekly Standard, according to a blog post by a member of the magazine’s staff, with the headline “Obama loses! Obama loses!” Rush Limbaugh declared himself “gleeful.” “World Rejects Obama,” gloated the Drudge Report. And so on.

So what did we learn from this moment? For one thing, we learned that the modern conservative movement, which dominates the modern Republican Party, has the emotional maturity of a bratty 13-year-old.

But more important, the episode illustrated an essential truth about the state of American politics: at this point, the guiding principle of one of our nation’s two great political parties is spite pure and simple. If Republicans think something might be good for the president, they’re against it — whether or not it’s good for America.

If anything this has gotten far worse, even since the Clinton years. Now you have Republican candidates comparing themselves to doughboys fighting the Nazis. No, really: "I'm willing to interrupt (my career) the same way that somebody interrupted their career and joined World War II and went off to fight the Nazis." You have not activists, but the very top of the Republican Party valuing long-shot extreme-right troglodytes over winnable candidates. You have wingers measuring their dicks over Michael Moore's box office receipts as if it's a subject of world-historical significance.

They are not a political party anymore. They are just a collection of insults.