Republican Reality and McCain's market stroll -- Bill Maher

[bklyncowgirl]

Bill Maher made a really good point on the Huffington Post.

John McCain's not an idiot. I'm sure he knows that it's not safe in Baghdad, but he has to pretend that it's safe in Baghdad because that's what the GOP base wants to hear.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bill-maher/john-mccain-fucked-by-the_b_45685.html

What a delicious irony. The Republicans have done such a good job of creating their own reality through Fox News and right wing talk radio that candidates who must appeal to Republicans to get the Republican presidential nomination must adhere to Republican Reality and ignore the objective reality that the rest of the world sees.

McCain HAS to say that things are safer in Baghdad. To say anything else would defy Republican Reality. To a Republican, seeing Straight Talk Johnny strolling through the marketplace with Lindsay (Five rugs for a buck) Graham and that fellow who compared it to a flea market in Indiana--shows reality as they know it and Fox news portrays it.

Unfortunately, to the rest of the world McCain looks like a demented old man who acts like everything is normal while surrounded by what looks like half the 82nd airborne. Better yet he throws General Petraus under the Straight Talk Express for being a four star nervous Nelly and making him take those troops on his little shopping trip.

He's not the only one. All the the Republican candidates have to stay close to Republican Reality. Rudy Giuliani, for example can't call McCain out on this silly stunt because to do so would be to admit that down is up and up is down and Baghdad is a really dangerous place when true Republican primary voters know, because Fox News tells them, that the surge is working and that Baghdad is safer than downtown Detroit. Mitt Romney can't speculate about the workings of McCain's septuagenarian brain because most of the people who are going to vote for Mr. Romney believe the same thing McCain does.

Of course when it comes to the general election the only thing I can say is Reality Bites.

[The Count]

1. And since Bill brougt it up, let's remember it once again:

The New York Times &62; Magazine &62; In the Magazine: Faith, Certainty and
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/17/magazine/17BUSH.html?ex=1176609600&en=9feb13aa5de7960c&ei=5070


Faith, Certainty and the Presidency of George W. Bush


By RON SUSKIND


Published: October 17, 2004


From the page: "The aide said that guys like me were ''in what we call the reality-based community,'' which he defined as people who ''believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.'' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ''That's not the way the world really works anymore,'' he continued. ''We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.'"

[bklyncowgirl]

2. So now we have approximately 30% of the country living in Republican Realityland

Republican Realityland where the only thing stopping a certain victory in the long war against violent extremism is the lack of will on the part of the American people caused by a media which insists on at least some of the time showing what is actually happening in Iraq as opposed to Republican Reality.

Republican Realityland where down is up and up is down and where thousands of Shiites marching in the street of Baghdad screaming Death to America is somehow a good thing.

Think of Disneyland but considerably more of a fantasy--at least Disneyland was well planned.