The Election Thing

Yesterday, among other things, the President said,

So let’s work together to make government work better, instead of treating it like an enemy or purposely making it work worse. That’s not what the founders of this nation envisioned when they gave us the gift of self-government. You don’t like a particular policy or a particular president, then argue for your position. Go out there and win an election. Push to change it. But don’t break it. Don’t break what our predecessors spent over two centuries building. That’s not being faithful to what this country is about.

Also yesterday, Daniel Larison of The American Conservative responded to Erick Erickson:

The fixation on punishing the Senate Republicans that “surrendered” is revealing. It shows that Erickson still doesn’t grasp that lack of control of the Senate doomed any effort to force significant concessions from the administration, and it shows how oblivious he remains to the greater political dangers that the GOP just escaped. Having a larger number of uncompromising Republicans in the Senate probably wouldn’t have prevented yesterday’s deal, since nearly two-thirds of the Senate GOP voted for it anyway. That’s a lot of “charlatans” to defeat.

People talk about “extremists” and “moderates” in the Republican Party. But what is the difference, really? They don’t disagree on issues, from what I can tell. On issue after issue — taxes, reproduction rights, health care — they’re all pretty much on the same page. The only substantial difference I can see is that the “moderates” realize elections have to be won, and the “extremists” don’t know that, or don’t care.

Conventional wisdom is saying that the GOP can kiss off any hope of re-taking the Senate in 2014, and they might also lose seats in the House. Obviously many Republicans in Congress saw their poll numbers diving and realized the hostage-taking amounted to the GOP shooting itself in the foot. And, as Larison says, there was never any realistic chance that all but the most inconsequential hostage demands would be approved by the Senate and accepted by the President. But the extremists couldn’t see that. Did the results of the 2012 elections not sink in? Well, no, I guess not.

It seems to me that the extremists are so intoxicated by their pathological certitude and entitled self-righteousness that elections are a mere technicality to them. Of course they like winning elections, because they see that as vindication. But when elections are lost, it doesn’t sink in that maybe their would-be constituents disagree with them. Rather, when elections are lost it is because the Will of Real Americans like them is being blocked by demonic forces. These demonic forces are served by the secret liberal elite cabal that runs the world and their lackeys in news media.

Obviously, God does not want them to accept the results of elections that go against them, because they are on God’s side. And to purify elections, they feel they must put bigger and tighter filters between voters and voting, so that only God’s People are allowed to vote. Only then will America be saved from the hell of multiculturalism and affordable health care for everyone.

Seriously; that’s how they think. In their minds, voter restrictions do not weaken republican representative government. Rather, by taking voting away from unclean riffraff they are restoring America to the pure and holy state the Founders intended. Or something.

And if they have to destroy the government and the economy and even get people killed to bring about their ends, so be it. “But who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears? For he is like a refiner’s fire and like fullers’ soap. He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and he will purify the sons of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, and they will bring offerings in righteousness to the Lord.” (Malachi 3:1-18)