Republicans Rely Less on Faith Than New Age Feel Good Fantasies

Dick Cheney speaks softly, calmly. I read that the vice president commands the table this way. People shut up and lean closer to drink in what he is saying.

Here he was sharing a stage with his wife in an intimate townhall meeting broadcast on C-Span.

One man in the audience stood up to ask a question. He was in his mid-thirties, dressed comfortably but casually, like it was Friday in accounting firm. Senator John Kerry continually talks about how the economy is in bad shape. And yet -- the young man said -- when I step outside of my front door and look up and down the street, I see about twelve brand new cars in the driveway.

So, the man wanted to know, is Senator Kerry wrong when he describes the economy in gloomy terms?

Senator Kerry, said Dick Cheney with his trademark dismissive sneer, has “spent a little too much time wind-surfing.”

How far have we come from the Kennedyesque world of athleticism and vigor that the supposed tough guy in this scenario is the grizzled old CEO with four heart attacks and the nail-biting sob sister is the 60-year-old Democrat who hunts, wind surfs and climbs mountains and -- oh yes -- fought in a war.

Okay, but everyone chuckled. Nothing wrong with that. Politics is always about being a little over-the-top. Funny. Colorful. Cheney is, after all, the one who mangled out of context Senator Kerry’s use of the word “sensitive“ in a speech on how a Kerry administration would dismantle the threat of Al Quaeda. And Kerry is right. It will require a sensitivity to international affairs to truly infiltrate Al Quaeda’s global network.

But Dick Cheney is in “smoke ‘em out” mode. Not Al Quaeda, but the opposition to his reelection.

What gets me is how this guy at the town hall meeting, a seemingly intelligent middle-aged fellow, can come to the conclusion that all of the news reports he hears about an economy in peril must be bogus because of what he sees on his street.

At a glance, this man didn’t seem sheltered. He looked and spoke like the kind of guy whose job might require traveling, whose business associates are well-educated, and -- apparently -- whose neighborhood is somewhat well-heeled. Certainly it requires some savvy to get to such a place, and savvy requires an awareness of what’s going on.

So what happened?

He got a Republican labotomy.

In this election many Republicans feel such a primal need to feel good about themselves by inventing good news, or wallowing in the bad news so much that the President becomes their sugar daddy/knight in shining armor protector.

They fancy themselves “Onward Christian Soldiers” crusaders. In fact, they are quintessential New Agers, inventing their own “Morning in America” TV commercials as they go along. Every morning, a glance up and down his comfortable street at the new cars . . . and it feels good. Seeing George W. Bush with a megaphone, dangling his arm over the rescue worker . . . it feels good. There’s Bush again, tossing out the first ball at Yankee Stadium ... it ain’t policy, but man, does it feel good.

For all their admiration of toughness, the truth is they are big fans of “tough guy” not “tough behavior.” These guys are pretty much softies and have been all of their lives. They count on tough-talking fellow softies whose bellicosity compensates for a lifetime of privilege, of not being accountable, and of passing the buck.

They equate fast decision making with sound judgment.

Popping his head out the front door to see all the new cars on the block is like the ground hog looking up to see winter and declaring "The entire world is an iceberg!"