From the ATF Archive, 11/21/06:
Somewhere over the weekend I read someone describe the braintrust
that has hijacked the GOP as the "chess club on steroids." Think Newt
Gingrich, Grover Norquist, Bill Kristol, Karl Rove, and Paul Wolfowitz:
very smart, geeky guys with second and third rate souls holding weird,
strongly held, sometimes extremist, nerdish, borderline crazy ideas
about how the world should be run. They are so many Bobby Fishers
supported by cadres of guys like Dwight
from "The Office" who have risen to take over the Republican party
establishment. This is hyperbole, but it points to something
fundamentally true.These guys are smart enough to recognize that they hardly represent
the interests of most Americans and that their geekiness is not
something most Americans could easily identify with. They craftily
devised ways to deflect attention away from themselves by branding the
Democrats as the party of "liberal elites," and found an affable,
down-home, empty suit with a political pedigree to be their front man.
It was so much smoke and mirrors, but Americans preoccupied with their
own personal lives and so not paying too much attention went along with
it and trusted that these guys knew what they were doing and had the
best interests of the country in mind–lowering our taxes and keeping us
safe and all. And Americans would have kept going along with it if it
hadn't all gone so colossally wrong. That's what you get when you put
too many Dwights
in charge of the various governmental agencies.
I don't think it's hyperbole anymore.
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