CORN BOWL, SOUTH CAROLINA — After Mitt Romney’s embarrassing 2012 loss to President Barack Obama, the Republican Party spent a lot of time and money doing an autopsy on itself. The result was a much-touted report that detailed ways for the Party of Lincoln to bring back its Halcyon Days. One of the main themes that came out of both the report and pretty much all corners of political punditry was that the party simply had to stop giving legitimacy to some of its more controversial, inflammatory, and embarrassingly fringe candidates that drug the image of the party down. The Hermain Cains and Michele Bachmanns needed to be ushered to the exits. Another theme? The party needed to move into the modern age with some of its messaging, if not its policy stances.
With the recent buzz coming from both Mitt Romney and Sarah Palin stating very loudly and very publicly their intentions to test the presidential waters, has RNC Chairman Reince Priebus lost sight of the Republican autopsy’s suggestions entirely? At a recent dinner hosted by Predacious Lending in their corporate headquarters’ town of Corn Bowl, South Caroline, Priebus addressed concerns that Palin and Romney campaigns would suggest the GOP had learned nothing from its last two losses. “Well, you know, we all got together and someone brought out the poppers. The next thing you know, we had come up with a whole new of trying to win over voters,” said Priebus to the assembled fundraiser diners.
“Honestly?” asked Priebus of the crowd at the Predacious Lending dinner, “Have any of us considered that maybe the only way to win is to let our fringe base have total control of the party,” Reince was presumably referring to the Tea Party wing. “I mean, maybe it’s time we chuck out that autopsy we did in 2012 and say, ‘Fuck it, let’s make ourselves look crazier than 2012!'” At first the attendees were a little taken aback by the RNC chair’s use of the “F” word, but they responded well to his fiery tone and ripped open in applause.
“I mean right?” Priebus was starting to intensify his volume. He was feeling the crowd. “Maybe all those so-called experts are just as wrong about why we lost last time as the other so-called experts are wrong about climate change!” The RNC chair dug into the Republican playbook for a tried and true favorite — disdain and distrust of academia and education. “Oh sure, they’ll learn you over at one of their prestigious brainwashing institutes of university-fication that things like ‘demographics’ and ‘not looking like blood thirsty, racist, homophobes’ will play as huge a role in 2016 they did in 2012, but we don’t need their liberal slide rules and socialist calculators to know the polls were skewed, and Romney would have won if we had just kept enough people from voting!”
“Voter ID,” continued Priebus, “will allow us to run literally anybody and everybody up onto the dais to debate, and we know we’ll win those states with voter ID laws. No matter how crazy the shit is we say,” said Reince, “certain types won’t be allowed to do anything about it, because we’ve made the hoops you have to jump through to get one of these voter IDs high, far, and set ablaze. Sure, you might not have never needed this extra ID to vote before, and sure, voter ID is statistical mysticism — it just doesn’t happen on any real level — but when have conservatives ever changed how they feel about something in the face of overwhelming, blinding evidence?” The crowd was roaring at this point.
“We don’t back down! We don’t sacrifice our conservative principles now matter how antithetical they are to science and common sense! You trim deficits by cutting taxes. Global warming is a myth. All immigrants are from Mexico and hate America and take free welfare and Federal money they’re actually legally forbidden from applying for. We hold these truths to be self-evident,” Priebus was almost gasping for air at this point, “that all men are created equally more qualified to earn more money than their wife, girlfriend or sister. And despite the fact they don’t have sentient brains and are a collection of cells, every zygote and blastocyst is a real, live human being worth protecting and putting rape victims in jail for aborting!”
Most of the rest of his speech was drowned out by the crowd’s roar. But when they did quiet down enough for him to be heard, he closed his speech with, “So let’s be crazy. If they’re going to think we’re all crazy for holding onto antiquated beliefs, then let’s show them just how cray-cray for Koch-caysh we can be! God Bless America! God Bless The Free Markets! And most importantly, God Bless The Republican Party!”
