Grand, Old Psychos

I used to love Republican politics. I have always admired the Republican primary process for the way its leaders and frontrunners, unlike the Democratic primary candidates, seem to draw energy, support and money by being less politically correct than the next guy. It's a damn-the-torpedoes attitude that has all but disappeared from our sanitized and boring political language. The more passionate and less socially acceptable a candidate becomes outside of their party, the stronger they become inside the base.It's an adherence to stroking the personalities of your faithful and not acknowledging the values of the outside that interests me so.

It's the American Way and probably why our politics skews rightward. The more passionate they are, though damaging to general election candidates, the more regarded they become within the right. Liberals are the opposite. The more politically correct, middle of the road, grounded and normal, the more support they garner. We want our candidates to be accepting, motherly figures who will console and hopefully (mostly in vain) bring the fickle moderates into the fold. I have envied the Republicans their brilliant and at the same time profoundly ignorant brand and execution. However, over the last several years, Republican political rhetoric has mutated into a kind of trickle-down insanity that has more and more translated itself in random acts of violence.

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