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Zombie
Voters and Fortune Cookies
by
Garry Reed
Who are
Barack Obama's supporters?
Picture an
old 1950s era b&w Zombie movie. The Undead rise from their graves,
begin lurching forward, arms outstretched, eyes vacant, all murmuring
eerily in unison, "Change, change, change…"
Except
Obama's Zombies don't rise from graves. They emerge from high schools and
colleges and Hollywood soundstages and media centers.
Much has
been made of Obama's appeal to American youth. His hook is emotion and
vague idealism, which works well on people loaded with emotion and vague
idealism but little in the way of experience and genuine knowledge. A
generation that barely discerns between Bambi and actual rutting deer
can't be expected to distinguish charisma from substance.
So Teeners
and Twenty-Somethings are expected to vote for The Bama in big numbers
because (here comes the part nobody wants to admit publicly) it's cool,
trendy, chic, sexy to have a Black Guy for president. It's also a perfect
opportunity for the cool, trendy, chic, sexy types to prove to themselves,
and to one other, that they're not racist.
But their
votes will be offset by the (other part nobody wants to publicly admit)
true American racists, salt of the earth folks who will beat their breasts
while staunchly declaring their utter lack of prejudice to the pollsters
but once they're alone in the voting booth will quietly grab that lever
and pull it hard for "Anybody But The Black Guy."
Obama will
also get the entertainer vote. Professional emoters, like actors and
singers and dancers and millionaire movie moguls who want to fit in with
the rest of the emoting clique, tend to approach everything else in life
by emoting about it as well: cry for the camera, moan for the microphone,
support the guy with the squishy "change" mantra.
Academics
and media mavens and environmentalists and all other members of the
emoting classes will also board the Obama bandwagon because it's cool,
trendy, chic, sexy to be (another truth that can't be uttered in polite
society) a Marxist, which they pretend not to be by calling themselves
"Progressive."
As Obama
is an empty suit, John McCain is his haberdashery opposite – the
would-be emperor who has no clothes.
For a John
McCain mental moment, picture him standing on the stage of a 10,000-seat
auditorium. Mingling behind him is every politician's usual gang of
power-pimping hangers-on, sycophants, kiss-ups, weasels and toadies. Now
look at the audience and note that the 10,000 seats are filled to
overflowing with three people.
John
McCain stands for everything and nothing. He's too liberal to attract
conservatives, too conservative to please liberals, too big government
power-wielding authoritarian to interest libertarians.
This is
because the John McCain philosophy of governance is a gigantic grab bag of
fortune cookies stuffed full of utterly unconnected and inconsistent bits
and pieces of political chaff.
Pull out a
cookie and break it open. "There is a Mexican-American border fence
in your future." That will hack off the liberals but it'll capture
the hardcore fundamentalist anti-immigrant conservative vote, even though
nearly every one of their forbears were illegal immigrants themselves
(unless, of course, they can prove that the native peoples of America
granted European settlers legal permission to enter their lands.)
Crunch
another cookie. "Riddle – What fails to curb Soft Money but
succeeds in abridging Freedom of Speech? Answer – McCain-Feingold
Campaign Finance Reform." That Hacked off his conservative base but
the emoting Progressive nee Marxist capitalist-hating libs loved it.
In the
end, McCain has his own army of zombies, Republicans who vote Republican
because they've always voted Republican because their parents voted
Republican even though they couldn't possibly tell you what Republicanism
is. (They'll happily finger-tick Conservative principles and Religious
principles and Traditional principles and Family Values but they haven't a
clue about actual Republican Party political principles.)
So there's
your choice, America: Czar of the Zombies or the Fortune Cookie Candidate.
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