2016 Postmortem
Related: About this forumConservatives ponder their losses. On a boat!
by Hunter for Daily Kos
In the wake of a dismal election, conservatives took a moment to have a gigantic sad. On a boat!
Onboard the Nieuw Amsterdam, no one could follow his advice. Who sent Obama here to destroy America? a fiftysomething woman asked me one evening over dinner, as if it were a perfectly reasonable question. And here onboard the cruise ship, it was. If the Nieuw Amsterdam was a kind of ark of American alienation, at least it was an eminently comfortable one.
Scooting past such conservative high points as Guantanamo and the Cayman Islands (who booked this thing?), the whole affair seems a perfect encapsulation of the modern conservative movement. A bunch of aging, decently well off white people get on a boat, play the slots for a while, and complain about what the country has come to:
I was in the middle of the fight against the propaganda, and I have stories like you wouldnt believe. These people are so evil. Theyre basically Fascists. Its unbelievable.
(His advice was to invest in Polish real estate, if you wanted to know.)
This was harsh medicine to reluctant patients, and afterward some of them made their discomfort known. That depressed me! one woman said. To my right, a man snapped, Thats bullshit!
It makes for a good read, at least. It is well known that one of the circles of hell is "cruise ship"; take the available escalator and you can go down to the next one, "cruise ship full of grumpy conservatives." (Perhaps the only thing keeping the whole escapade from ending in an outbreak of Legionnaires' Disease was the attendees' own deep aversion to military service.)
It also seems that the party strategists and other movers are no closer to edging their own base away from the current crop of conspiracy theories and crabby racism, much less towards anything more productive. Still, it makes you think. Maybe there will be cruise ship conservatism as a way of life, in the distant future? A new seafaring, rapidly aging population no longer comfortable with the scandalously 1990-ish tax rates and ever-so-slightly better health insurance provided in New America, but also unable to set down roots anywhere else. Because, after all:
Classic. Simply classic.
-30-
Link to full NY Mag article:
http://nymag.com/news/features/republican-caribbean-cruise-2012-12/
Link to above article at Daily Kos, posted in full here at DU with permission:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/12/25/1173664/-Conservatives-ponder-their-losses-On-a-boat
cantbeserious
(13,039 posts)eom
RKP5637
(67,008 posts)Last edited Tue Dec 25, 2012, 02:38 PM - Edit history (1)
no longer welcome in America IMO. They need to go back under the rock, where many were, before their grotesque savior Reagan appeared and destroyed America for "we the people."
Angry Dragon
(36,693 posts)Rectangle
(667 posts)lunatica
(53,410 posts)May they become very miserable. All that money didn't buy them the Presidency. Poor them!
cecilfirefox
(784 posts)They have no, I mean NO conceptualization of the direction of the country or the general pulse of the people. This past two years had Liberals squalling that Neo-cons were living in a 'bubble' or high on top of bullshit mountain. And the election totally vindicated us, 100%. All the polls pointed to Obama leading Romney, Romney being squarely behind- yet they still convinced themselves that Romney was going to win with the electoral map of the President's victory, essentially, such that Mittens didn't even take the time to write a concession speech.
It's practically pathetic. They are so close to becoming completely and utterly national uncompetitive.
firenewt
(298 posts)and not keep popping up in ours.