Notice the way Frank Rich sculpts the political landscape of the election: he doesn’t credit the democratic campaign with doing any ideological work.
When David Letterman said that the 10 G.O.P. presidential candidates at an early debate looked like “guys waiting to tee off at a restricted country club,” he was the first to correctly call the election. On Nov. 4, that’s roughly the sole constituency that remained loyal to the party — minus its wealthiest slice, a previously solid G.O.P. stronghold that turned blue this year (in a whopping swing of 34 percentage points). The Republicans lost every region of the country by double digits except the South, which they won by less than double digits (9 points). They took the South only because McCain, who ran roughly even with Obama among whites in every other region, won Southern whites by 38 percentage points.
The GOP, as he casts it—a gerontological racist white men’s association—has merely been out of touch with real Real America for an unspecified amount of time. While I wish it were the truth, that logic recklessly glosses over the 58,279,894 Americans who aligned themselves with the Republican vision of the country (an exclusive golf resort, Rich would have you believe). He continues to misunderstand how cultural and electoral politics work. I can only assume that in his mind, if the equality-loving american culture is the superstructure, then the base must be the political correctness-obsessed punditocracy, because these guys don’t seem to think the way Rich does.
